Python

What is Python?

Python is general-purpose, free and open-source programming language for both software developers and researchers. It is becoming increasingly popular amongst psychology researchers, allowing researchers to create experiments, pre-process and clean data, as well as conduct statistical analyses and graphical visualization.

Building Experiments

PsychoPy is a Python package that has been used amongst psychology and neuroscientists to run cognitive experiments. Not only does it comprise of a graphical user interface (GUI) so that novices can easily create simple experiments, more advanced customization can be included using Python code.

Data Wrangling

Base Python consists of a series of modules that accommodates different functionalities. For example, the pandas module allows for importing, manipulation and organization of text files, csv (comma-separated-values) files, or excel spreadsheets. The scipy module is also made for statistical analyses, and matplotlib for graphical visualization of data.

Lab Use

Researchers at Clinical Brain Lab use Python to analyze EEG and physiological (e.g., ECG, EDA, respiration, EMG, EOG) data.