cortex-v1.4.2

CORTEX

This is the desktop test taker for our adaptive EEG certification project. You answer a sequence of EEG questions, and an adaptive engine decides what to ask you next based on how you have done so far. The test runs entirely on your computer and uploads only the result CSVs to our Dropbox folder when you finish.

What the test does

We give you EEG recordings and ask you to classify them. The test covers 7 tasks: a binary spike vs no spike question (Yes / No) for short spike clips, and a 6 way pattern classification for longer IIIC recordings (Seizure, LPD, GPD, LRDA, GRDA, Other).

The engine is adaptive. It uses an MCMC (Sequential Monte Carlo) particle cloud to track your skill on each task in real time, and at every step it picks the question that will reduce its uncertainty about you the fastest. It stops asking about a task once it has enough evidence to say PASS, FAIL, or REFER for that task with confidence, then moves on. Spike questions come first as a block. When the engine has resolved the spike task, or has used up all the spike recordings, it transitions to the IIIC block. The final results screen shows a verdict for each of the 7 tasks.

The testing session will be 500 questions long. We are collecting test response data following when the adaptive Bayesian framework would normally finish the test.

The Intel and Apple Silicon mac downloads are both still here: CORTEX-mac-silicon.dmg for Apple Silicon and CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel. Pick the one that matches your Mac (the Downloads section below explains how to tell). Windows and Linux are unchanged.

Downloads

• macOS, Apple Silicon (M1 or newer): CORTEX-mac-silicon.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• macOS, Intel: CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• Windows: CORTEX-windows.zip. See "Opening CORTEX on Windows" below.
• Linux: CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz. See "Opening CORTEX on Linux" below.

Not sure which Mac you have? Click the Apple menu in the top left corner and choose About This Mac. If you see a "Chip" line with an Apple M name, download the Apple Silicon DMG. If you see a "Processor" line with an Intel name, download the Intel DMG. The Apple Silicon download will not open on an Intel Mac, so this choice matters.

System requirements

• macOS 12 Monterey or newer. We provide separate downloads for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs; download the one that matches your chip.
• Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64 bit).
• Linux with glibc 2.35 or newer. That covers Ubuntu 22.04 and later, Debian 12 and later, Fedora 36 and later, RHEL 9 and later, and current Arch.
• About 1.2 GB of free disk space for the installed app plus the bundled test bank (the v1.3.6 bank is larger).
• An internet connection to upload results at the end of the session. The test itself runs offline.

You do not need Python installed. Everything the test needs is bundled inside the installer.

Opening CORTEX on macOS

Because we are not yet shipping a signed build (this is an internal pilot, not a public release), macOS will warn you the first time you launch it. The warning is normal and goes away after the one time approval.

Important: drag CORTEX to your Applications folder before you open it. Do not double click CORTEX from inside the disk image window. macOS quietly runs apps from a downloaded location inside a read only "translocated" copy and caches that copy. Old cached copies sometimes get re-run even after you download a fixed update. Installing to Applications avoids this.

1. Double click the DMG you downloaded (CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon, CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel). A window opens showing a CORTEX icon on the left and an Applications shortcut on the right.
2. Drag the CORTEX icon onto the Applications shortcut. Do not open CORTEX from inside this disk image window.
3. Eject the disk image. In Finder, click the small arrow next to "CORTEX" in the sidebar.
4. Open your Applications folder and double click CORTEX.
5. macOS shows "CORTEX Not Opened. Apple could not verify CORTEX is free of malware". Click Done.
6. Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then scroll down to the Security section.
7. You will see "CORTEX was blocked to protect your Mac". Click Open Anyway. macOS will ask for your password.
8. Open CORTEX from Applications again. This time you get a new dialog with an Open button. Click Open.
9. macOS remembers your approval. No warnings on subsequent launches.

If you are comfortable with Terminal, this single command also clears the quarantine flag after dragging the app to Applications and skips steps 5 through 8:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CORTEX.app

Opening CORTEX on Windows

1. Right click CORTEX-windows.zip and choose Extract All. Pick a folder you can find again (Documents is fine).
2. Open the extracted CORTEX/ folder.
3. Double click CORTEX.exe.
4. The first time you launch, Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. Only the first launch.

If your IT policy blocks unsigned executables and SmartScreen does not give you a Run anyway button, please email the study team and we will work around it.

Opening CORTEX on Linux

Open a terminal in the folder where the tarball is and run:

tar xzf CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
./CORTEX/CORTEX

You can also extract the tarball with your file manager and double click the CORTEX executable inside the extracted folder. Most desktop environments will run it as a binary on first double click.

The Linux build is x86_64 only. The visualization videos that render at the end of a session use ffmpeg. The app bundles its own copy via imageio-ffmpeg, so you do not normally need to install ffmpeg yourself. If the videos do not generate, install your distro's ffmpeg package as a fallback: sudo apt install ffmpeg on Debian or Ubuntu, sudo dnf install ffmpeg on Fedora or RHEL, sudo pacman -S ffmpeg on Arch. Sessions complete cleanly without ffmpeg, just without the visualization MP4s.

Reporting bugs

Anything that crashes, looks visually wrong, is confusing, or feels too slow: please note what you saw and email the study team at ewk23@stanford.edu. That feedback is the whole point of this internal round. If the test froze on you, include the question number it froze on and roughly how far in (5 minutes? 20?). That helps a lot. Happy testing!

cortex-v1.4.1

CORTEX

This is the desktop test taker for our adaptive EEG certification project. You answer a sequence of EEG questions, and an adaptive engine decides what to ask you next based on how you have done so far. The test runs entirely on your computer and uploads only the result CSVs to our Dropbox folder when you finish.

What the test does

We give you EEG recordings and ask you to classify them. The test covers 7 tasks: a binary spike vs no spike question (Yes / No) for short spike clips, and a 6 way pattern classification for longer IIIC recordings (Seizure, LPD, GPD, LRDA, GRDA, Other).

The engine is adaptive. It uses an MCMC (Sequential Monte Carlo) particle cloud to track your skill on each task in real time, and at every step it picks the question that will reduce its uncertainty about you the fastest. It stops asking about a task once it has enough evidence to say PASS, FAIL, or REFER for that task with confidence, then moves on. Spike questions come first as a block. When the engine has resolved the spike task, or has used up all the spike recordings, it transitions to the IIIC block. The final results screen shows a verdict for each of the 7 tasks.

Sessions will run for 500 questions for v1.4.1.

Downloads

• macOS, Apple Silicon (M1 or newer): CORTEX-mac-silicon.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• macOS, Intel: CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• Windows: CORTEX-windows.zip. See "Opening CORTEX on Windows" below.
• Linux: CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz. See "Opening CORTEX on Linux" below.

Not sure which Mac you have? Click the Apple menu in the top left corner and choose About This Mac. If you see a "Chip" line with an Apple M name, download the Apple Silicon DMG. If you see a "Processor" line with an Intel name, download the Intel DMG. The Apple Silicon download will not open on an Intel Mac, so this choice matters.

System requirements

• macOS 12 Monterey or newer. We provide separate downloads for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs; download the one that matches your chip.
• Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64 bit).
• Linux with glibc 2.35 or newer. That covers Ubuntu 22.04 and later, Debian 12 and later, Fedora 36 and later, RHEL 9 and later, and current Arch.
• About 1.2 GB of free disk space for the installed app plus the bundled test bank (the v1.3.6 bank is larger).
• An internet connection to upload results at the end of the session. The test itself runs offline.

You do not need Python installed. Everything the test needs is bundled inside the installer.

Opening CORTEX on macOS

Because we are not yet shipping a signed build (this is an internal pilot, not a public release), macOS will warn you the first time you launch it. The warning is normal and goes away after the one time approval.

Important: drag CORTEX to your Applications folder before you open it. Do not double click CORTEX from inside the disk image window. macOS quietly runs apps from a downloaded location inside a read only "translocated" copy and caches that copy. Old cached copies sometimes get re-run even after you download a fixed update. Installing to Applications avoids this.

1. Double click the DMG you downloaded (CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon, CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel). A window opens showing a CORTEX icon on the left and an Applications shortcut on the right.
2. Drag the CORTEX icon onto the Applications shortcut. Do not open CORTEX from inside this disk image window.
3. Eject the disk image. In Finder, click the small arrow next to "CORTEX" in the sidebar.
4. Open your Applications folder and double click CORTEX.
5. macOS shows "CORTEX Not Opened. Apple could not verify CORTEX is free of malware". Click Done.
6. Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then scroll down to the Security section.
7. You will see "CORTEX was blocked to protect your Mac". Click Open Anyway. macOS will ask for your password.
8. Open CORTEX from Applications again. This time you get a new dialog with an Open button. Click Open.
9. macOS remembers your approval. No warnings on subsequent launches.

If you are comfortable with Terminal, this single command also clears the quarantine flag after dragging the app to Applications and skips steps 5 through 8:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CORTEX.app

Opening CORTEX on Windows

1. Right click CORTEX-windows.zip and choose Extract All. Pick a folder you can find again (Documents is fine).
2. Open the extracted CORTEX/ folder.
3. Double click CORTEX.exe.
4. The first time you launch, Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. Only the first launch.

If your IT policy blocks unsigned executables and SmartScreen does not give you a Run anyway button, please email the study team and we will work around it.

Opening CORTEX on Linux

Open a terminal in the folder where the tarball is and run:

tar xzf CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
./CORTEX/CORTEX

You can also extract the tarball with your file manager and double click the CORTEX executable inside the extracted folder. Most desktop environments will run it as a binary on first double click.

The Linux build is x86_64 only. The visualization videos that render at the end of a session use ffmpeg. The app bundles its own copy via imageio-ffmpeg, so you do not normally need to install ffmpeg yourself. If the videos do not generate, install your distro's ffmpeg package as a fallback: sudo apt install ffmpeg on Debian or Ubuntu, sudo dnf install ffmpeg on Fedora or RHEL, sudo pacman -S ffmpeg on Arch. Sessions complete cleanly without ffmpeg, just without the visualization MP4s.

Reporting bugs

Anything that crashes, looks visually wrong, is confusing, or feels too slow: please note what you saw and email the study team at ewk23@stanford.edu. That feedback is the whole point of this internal round. If the test froze on you, include the question number it froze on and roughly how far in (5 minutes? 20?). That helps a lot.

cortex-v1.4.0

CORTEX

This is the desktop test taker for our adaptive EEG certification project. You answer a sequence of EEG questions, and an adaptive engine decides what to ask you next based on how you have done so far. The test runs entirely on your computer and uploads only the result CSVs to our Dropbox folder when you finish.

What the test does

We give you EEG recordings and ask you to classify them. The test covers 7 tasks: a binary spike vs no spike question (Yes / No) for short spike clips, and a 6 way pattern classification for longer IIIC recordings (Seizure, LPD, GPD, LRDA, GRDA, Other).

The engine is adaptive. It uses an MCMC (Sequential Monte Carlo) particle cloud to track your skill on each task in real time, and at every step it picks the question that will reduce its uncertainty about you the fastest. It stops asking about a task once it has enough evidence to say PASS, FAIL, or REFER for that task with confidence, then moves on. Spike questions come first as a block. When the engine has resolved the spike task, or has used up all the spike recordings, it transitions to the IIIC block. The final results screen shows a verdict for each of the 7 tasks.

Sessions typically run between about 250 and 450 questions depending on how clearly your answers separate from the cut score on each task. Confident raters finish faster; borderline raters trigger more questions and may reach the longer end of that range.

Downloads

• macOS, Apple Silicon (M1 or newer): CORTEX-mac.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• macOS, Intel: CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• Windows: CORTEX-windows.zip. See "Opening CORTEX on Windows" below.
• Linux: CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz. See "Opening CORTEX on Linux" below.

Not sure which Mac you have? Click the Apple menu in the top left corner and choose About This Mac. If you see a "Chip" line with an Apple M name, download the Apple Silicon DMG. If you see a "Processor" line with an Intel name, download the Intel DMG. The Apple Silicon download will not open on an Intel Mac, so this choice matters.

System requirements

• macOS 12 Monterey or newer. We provide separate downloads for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs; download the one that matches your chip.
• Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64 bit).
• Linux with glibc 2.35 or newer. That covers Ubuntu 22.04 and later, Debian 12 and later, Fedora 36 and later, RHEL 9 and later, and current Arch.
• About 1.2 GB of free disk space for the installed app plus the bundled test bank (the v1.3.6 bank is larger).
• An internet connection to upload results at the end of the session. The test itself runs offline.

You do not need Python installed. Everything the test needs is bundled inside the installer.

Opening CORTEX on macOS

Because we are not yet shipping a signed build (this is an internal pilot, not a public release), macOS will warn you the first time you launch it. The warning is normal and goes away after the one time approval.

Important: drag CORTEX to your Applications folder before you open it. Do not double click CORTEX from inside the disk image window. macOS quietly runs apps from a downloaded location inside a read only "translocated" copy and caches that copy. Old cached copies sometimes get re-run even after you download a fixed update. Installing to Applications avoids this.

1. Double click the DMG you downloaded (CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon, CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel). A window opens showing a CORTEX icon on the left and an Applications shortcut on the right.
2. Drag the CORTEX icon onto the Applications shortcut. Do not open CORTEX from inside this disk image window.
3. Eject the disk image. In Finder, click the small arrow next to "CORTEX" in the sidebar.
4. Open your Applications folder and double click CORTEX.
5. macOS shows "CORTEX Not Opened. Apple could not verify CORTEX is free of malware". Click Done.
6. Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then scroll down to the Security section.
7. You will see "CORTEX was blocked to protect your Mac". Click Open Anyway. macOS will ask for your password.
8. Open CORTEX from Applications again. This time you get a new dialog with an Open button. Click Open.
9. macOS remembers your approval. No warnings on subsequent launches.

If you are comfortable with Terminal, this single command also clears the quarantine flag after dragging the app to Applications and skips steps 5 through 8:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CORTEX.app

Opening CORTEX on Windows

1. Right click CORTEX-windows.zip and choose Extract All. Pick a folder you can find again (Documents is fine).
2. Open the extracted CORTEX/ folder.
3. Double click CORTEX.exe.
4. The first time you launch, Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. Only the first launch.

If your IT policy blocks unsigned executables and SmartScreen does not give you a Run anyway button, please email the study team and we will work around it.

Opening CORTEX on Linux

Open a terminal in the folder where the tarball is and run:

tar xzf CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
./CORTEX/CORTEX

You can also extract the tarball with your file manager and double click the CORTEX executable inside the extracted folder. Most desktop environments will run it as a binary on first double click.

The Linux build is x86_64 only. The visualization videos that render at the end of a session use ffmpeg. The app bundles its own copy via imageio-ffmpeg, so you do not normally need to install ffmpeg yourself. If the videos do not generate, install your distro's ffmpeg package as a fallback: sudo apt install ffmpeg on Debian or Ubuntu, sudo dnf install ffmpeg on Fedora or RHEL, sudo pacman -S ffmpeg on Arch. Sessions complete cleanly without ffmpeg, just without the visualization MP4s.

Reporting bugs

Anything that crashes, looks visually wrong, is confusing, or feels too slow: please note what you saw and email the study team at ewk23@stanford.edu. That feedback is the whole point of this internal round. If the test froze on you, include the question number it froze on and roughly how far in (5 minutes? 20?). That helps a lot.

cortex-v1.3.9

CORTEX

This is the desktop test taker for our adaptive EEG certification project. You answer a sequence of EEG questions, and an adaptive engine decides what to ask you next based on how you have done so far. The test runs entirely on your computer and uploads only the result CSVs to our Dropbox folder when you finish.

What the test does

We give you EEG recordings and ask you to classify them. The test covers 7 tasks: a binary spike vs no spike question (Yes / No) for short spike clips, and a 6 way pattern classification for longer IIIC recordings (Seizure, LPD, GPD, LRDA, GRDA, Other).

The engine is adaptive. It uses an MCMC (Sequential Monte Carlo) particle cloud to track your skill on each task in real time, and at every step it picks the question that will reduce its uncertainty about you the fastest. It stops asking about a task once it has enough evidence to say PASS, FAIL, or REFER for that task with confidence, then moves on. Spike questions come first as a block. When the engine has resolved the spike task, or has used up all the spike recordings, it transitions to the IIIC block. The final results screen shows a verdict for each of the 7 tasks.

Sessions typically run between about 250 and 500 questions depending on how clearly your answers separate from the cut score on each task. Confident raters finish faster; borderline raters trigger more questions and may reach the longer end of that range.

Downloads

• macOS, Apple Silicon (M1 or newer): CORTEX-mac.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• macOS, Intel: CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• Windows: CORTEX-windows.zip. See "Opening CORTEX on Windows" below.
• Linux: CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz. See "Opening CORTEX on Linux" below.

Not sure which Mac you have? Click the Apple menu in the top left corner and choose About This Mac. If you see a "Chip" line with an Apple M name, download the Apple Silicon DMG. If you see a "Processor" line with an Intel name, download the Intel DMG. The Apple Silicon download will not open on an Intel Mac, so this choice matters.

System requirements

• macOS 12 Monterey or newer. We provide separate downloads for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs; download the one that matches your chip.
• Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64 bit).
• Linux with glibc 2.35 or newer. That covers Ubuntu 22.04 and later, Debian 12 and later, Fedora 36 and later, RHEL 9 and later, and current Arch.
• About 1.2 GB of free disk space for the installed app plus the bundled test bank.
• An internet connection to upload results at the end of the session. The test itself runs offline.

You do not need Python installed. Everything the test needs is bundled inside the installer.

Opening CORTEX on macOS

Because we are not yet shipping a signed build (this is an internal pilot, not a public release), macOS will warn you the first time you launch it. The warning is normal and goes away after the one time approval.

Important: drag CORTEX to your Applications folder before you open it. Do not double click CORTEX from inside the disk image window. macOS quietly runs apps from a downloaded location inside a read only "translocated" copy and caches that copy. Old cached copies sometimes get re-run even after you download a fixed update. Installing to Applications avoids this.

1. Double click the DMG you downloaded (CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon, CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel). A window opens showing a CORTEX icon on the left and an Applications shortcut on the right.
2. Drag the CORTEX icon onto the Applications shortcut. Do not open CORTEX from inside this disk image window.
3. Eject the disk image. In Finder, click the small arrow next to "CORTEX" in the sidebar.
4. Open your Applications folder and double click CORTEX.
5. macOS shows "CORTEX Not Opened. Apple could not verify CORTEX is free of malware". Click Done.
6. Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then scroll down to the Security section.
7. You will see "CORTEX was blocked to protect your Mac". Click Open Anyway. macOS will ask for your password.
8. Open CORTEX from Applications again. This time you get a new dialog with an Open button. Click Open.
9. macOS remembers your approval. No warnings on subsequent launches.

If you are comfortable with Terminal, this single command also clears the quarantine flag after dragging the app to Applications and skips steps 5 through 8:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CORTEX.app

Opening CORTEX on Windows

1. Right click CORTEX-windows.zip and choose Extract All. Pick a folder you can find again (Documents is fine).
2. Open the extracted CORTEX/ folder.
3. Double click CORTEX.exe.
4. The first time you launch, Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. Only the first launch.

If your IT policy blocks unsigned executables and SmartScreen does not give you a Run anyway button, please email the study team and we will work around it.

Opening CORTEX on Linux

Open a terminal in the folder where the tarball is and run:

tar xzf CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
./CORTEX/CORTEX

You can also extract the tarball with your file manager and double click the CORTEX executable inside the extracted folder. Most desktop environments will run it as a binary on first double click.

The Linux build is x86_64 only. The visualization videos that render at the end of a session use ffmpeg. The app bundles its own copy via imageio-ffmpeg, so you do not normally need to install ffmpeg yourself. If the videos do not generate, install your distro's ffmpeg package as a fallback: sudo apt install ffmpeg on Debian or Ubuntu, sudo dnf install ffmpeg on Fedora or RHEL, sudo pacman -S ffmpeg on Arch. Sessions complete cleanly without ffmpeg, just without the visualization MP4s.

Reporting bugs

Anything that crashes, looks visually wrong, is confusing, or feels too slow: please note what you saw and email the study team at ewk23@stanford.edu. That feedback is the whole point of this internal round. If the test froze on you, include the question number it froze on and roughly how far in (5 minutes? 20?). That helps a lot.

cortex-v1.3.8

CORTEX

This is the desktop test taker for our adaptive EEG certification project. You answer a sequence of EEG questions, and an adaptive engine decides what to ask you next based on how you have done so far. The test runs entirely on your computer and uploads only the result CSVs to our Dropbox folder when you finish.

What the test does

We give you EEG recordings and ask you to classify them. The test covers 7 tasks: a binary spike vs no spike question (Yes / No) for short spike clips, and a 6 way pattern classification for longer IIIC recordings (Seizure, LPD, GPD, LRDA, GRDA, Other).

The engine is adaptive. It uses an MCMC (Sequential Monte Carlo) particle cloud to track your skill on each task in real time, and at every step it picks the question that will reduce its uncertainty about you the fastest. It stops asking about a task once it has enough evidence to say PASS, FAIL, or REFER for that task with confidence, then moves on. Spike questions come first as a block. When the engine has resolved the spike task, or has used up all the spike recordings, it transitions to the IIIC block. The final results screen shows a verdict for each of the 7 tasks.

Sessions typically run between about 250 and 500 questions depending on how clearly your answers separate from the cut score on each task. Confident raters finish faster; borderline raters trigger more questions and may reach the longer end of that range.

What is new in v1.3.7

A small update over v1.3.6, running the same rigorous test. As a reminder: this version waits for 95 percent confidence before it gives you a verdict on each category, so it is more thorough and can ask more questions than the earliest builds. A session typically runs a few hundred questions, and a category right at the boundary may come back as REFER, which is a valid did-not-have-enough-evidence outcome rather than a failure. When you finish, the results we upload are de-identified: a random session id, no name, and your institution replaced by a coded site label. Your name stays only on your own computer.

New in v1.3.7: we increased the variety of questions late in a session, so the test switches categories more often and you will see fewer long runs of the same category near the end. We also fixed a display issue where the spike (Yes / No) accuracy on your results could read 0 percent even when you answered some correctly; spike accuracy now reflects your real performance. Your scoring, the categories, and how verdicts are reached are unchanged.

The Intel and Apple Silicon mac downloads are both still here: CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon and CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel. Pick the one that matches your Mac (the Downloads section below explains how to tell). Windows and Linux are unchanged.

If you downloaded an earlier build

If you took a session on any earlier build (v1.2.x or v1.3.0 through v1.3.5), your results CSVs are still safe in your Dropbox results folder. Those builds used a faster, less strict confidence setting and a smaller question bank, so a re-run on v1.3.6 gives a more rigorous and more comparable result for the study. Please re-download and run the test again on v1.3.6 if you can spare the time; otherwise just send any feedback you have and we will work with what we have.

Downloads

• macOS, Apple Silicon (M1 or newer): CORTEX-mac.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• macOS, Intel: CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• Windows: CORTEX-windows.zip. See "Opening CORTEX on Windows" below.
• Linux: CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz. See "Opening CORTEX on Linux" below.

Not sure which Mac you have? Click the Apple menu in the top left corner and choose About This Mac. If you see a "Chip" line with an Apple M name, download the Apple Silicon DMG. If you see a "Processor" line with an Intel name, download the Intel DMG. The Apple Silicon download will not open on an Intel Mac, so this choice matters.

System requirements

• macOS 12 Monterey or newer. We provide separate downloads for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs; download the one that matches your chip.
• Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64 bit).
• Linux with glibc 2.35 or newer. That covers Ubuntu 22.04 and later, Debian 12 and later, Fedora 36 and later, RHEL 9 and later, and current Arch.
• About 1.2 GB of free disk space for the installed app plus the bundled test bank (the v1.3.6 bank is larger).
• An internet connection to upload results at the end of the session. The test itself runs offline.

You do not need Python installed. Everything the test needs is bundled inside the installer.

Opening CORTEX on macOS

Because we are not yet shipping a signed build (this is an internal pilot, not a public release), macOS will warn you the first time you launch it. The warning is normal and goes away after the one time approval.

Important: drag CORTEX to your Applications folder before you open it. Do not double click CORTEX from inside the disk image window. macOS quietly runs apps from a downloaded location inside a read only "translocated" copy and caches that copy. Old cached copies sometimes get re-run even after you download a fixed update. Installing to Applications avoids this.

1. Double click the DMG you downloaded (CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon, CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel). A window opens showing a CORTEX icon on the left and an Applications shortcut on the right.
2. Drag the CORTEX icon onto the Applications shortcut. Do not open CORTEX from inside this disk image window.
3. Eject the disk image. In Finder, click the small arrow next to "CORTEX" in the sidebar.
4. Open your Applications folder and double click CORTEX.
5. macOS shows "CORTEX Not Opened. Apple could not verify CORTEX is free of malware". Click Done.
6. Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then scroll down to the Security section.
7. You will see "CORTEX was blocked to protect your Mac". Click Open Anyway. macOS will ask for your password.
8. Open CORTEX from Applications again. This time you get a new dialog with an Open button. Click Open.
9. macOS remembers your approval. No warnings on subsequent launches.

If you are comfortable with Terminal, this single command also clears the quarantine flag after dragging the app to Applications and skips steps 5 through 8:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CORTEX.app

Opening CORTEX on Windows

1. Right click CORTEX-windows.zip and choose Extract All. Pick a folder you can find again (Documents is fine).
2. Open the extracted CORTEX/ folder.
3. Double click CORTEX.exe.
4. The first time you launch, Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. Only the first launch.

If your IT policy blocks unsigned executables and SmartScreen does not give you a Run anyway button, please email the study team and we will work around it.

Opening CORTEX on Linux

Open a terminal in the folder where the tarball is and run:

tar xzf CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
./CORTEX/CORTEX

You can also extract the tarball with your file manager and double click the CORTEX executable inside the extracted folder. Most desktop environments will run it as a binary on first double click.

The Linux build is x86_64 only. The visualization videos that render at the end of a session use ffmpeg. The app bundles its own copy via imageio-ffmpeg, so you do not normally need to install ffmpeg yourself. If the videos do not generate, install your distro's ffmpeg package as a fallback: sudo apt install ffmpeg on Debian or Ubuntu, sudo dnf install ffmpeg on Fedora or RHEL, sudo pacman -S ffmpeg on Arch. Sessions complete cleanly without ffmpeg, just without the visualization MP4s.

Reporting bugs

Anything that crashes, looks visually wrong, is confusing, or feels too slow: please note what you saw and email the study team. That feedback is the whole point of this internal round. If the test froze on you, include the question number it froze on and roughly how far in (5 minutes? 20?). That helps a lot.

cortex-v1.3.7

CORTEX

This is the desktop test taker for our adaptive EEG certification project. You answer a sequence of EEG questions, and an adaptive engine decides what to ask you next based on how you have done so far. The test runs entirely on your computer and uploads only the result CSVs to our Dropbox folder when you finish.

What the test does

We give you EEG recordings and ask you to classify them. The test covers 7 tasks: a binary spike vs no spike question (Yes / No) for short spike clips, and a 6 way pattern classification for longer IIIC recordings (Seizure, LPD, GPD, LRDA, GRDA, Other).

The engine is adaptive. It uses an MCMC (Sequential Monte Carlo) particle cloud to track your skill on each task in real time, and at every step it picks the question that will reduce its uncertainty about you the fastest. It stops asking about a task once it has enough evidence to say PASS, FAIL, or REFER for that task with confidence, then moves on. Spike questions come first as a block. When the engine has resolved the spike task, or has used up all the spike recordings, it transitions to the IIIC block. The final results screen shows a verdict for each of the 7 tasks.

Sessions typically run between about 250 and 500 questions depending on how clearly your answers separate from the cut score on each task. Confident raters finish faster; borderline raters trigger more questions and may reach the longer end of that range.

What is new in v1.3.7

A small update over v1.3.6, running the same rigorous test. As a reminder: this version waits for 95 percent confidence before it gives you a verdict on each category, so it is more thorough and can ask more questions than the earliest builds. A session typically runs a few hundred questions, and a category right at the boundary may come back as REFER, which is a valid did-not-have-enough-evidence outcome rather than a failure. When you finish, the results we upload are de-identified: a random session id, no name, and your institution replaced by a coded site label. Your name stays only on your own computer.

New in v1.3.7: we increased the variety of questions late in a session, so the test switches categories more often and you will see fewer long runs of the same category near the end. We also fixed a display issue where the spike (Yes / No) accuracy on your results could read 0 percent even when you answered some correctly; spike accuracy now reflects your real performance. Your scoring, the categories, and how verdicts are reached are unchanged.

The Intel and Apple Silicon mac downloads are both still here: CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon and CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel. Pick the one that matches your Mac (the Downloads section below explains how to tell). Windows and Linux are unchanged.

If you downloaded an earlier build

If you took a session on any earlier build (v1.2.x or v1.3.0 through v1.3.5), your results CSVs are still safe in your Dropbox results folder. Those builds used a faster, less strict confidence setting and a smaller question bank, so a re-run on v1.3.6 gives a more rigorous and more comparable result for the study. Please re-download and run the test again on v1.3.6 if you can spare the time; otherwise just send any feedback you have and we will work with what we have.

Downloads

• macOS, Apple Silicon (M1 or newer): CORTEX-mac.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• macOS, Intel: CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• Windows: CORTEX-windows.zip. See "Opening CORTEX on Windows" below.
• Linux: CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz. See "Opening CORTEX on Linux" below.

Not sure which Mac you have? Click the Apple menu in the top left corner and choose About This Mac. If you see a "Chip" line with an Apple M name, download the Apple Silicon DMG. If you see a "Processor" line with an Intel name, download the Intel DMG. The Apple Silicon download will not open on an Intel Mac, so this choice matters.

System requirements

• macOS 12 Monterey or newer. We provide separate downloads for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs; download the one that matches your chip.
• Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64 bit).
• Linux with glibc 2.35 or newer. That covers Ubuntu 22.04 and later, Debian 12 and later, Fedora 36 and later, RHEL 9 and later, and current Arch.
• About 1.2 GB of free disk space for the installed app plus the bundled test bank (the v1.3.6 bank is larger).
• An internet connection to upload results at the end of the session. The test itself runs offline.

You do not need Python installed. Everything the test needs is bundled inside the installer.

Opening CORTEX on macOS

Because we are not yet shipping a signed build (this is an internal pilot, not a public release), macOS will warn you the first time you launch it. The warning is normal and goes away after the one time approval.

Important: drag CORTEX to your Applications folder before you open it. Do not double click CORTEX from inside the disk image window. macOS quietly runs apps from a downloaded location inside a read only "translocated" copy and caches that copy. Old cached copies sometimes get re-run even after you download a fixed update. Installing to Applications avoids this.

1. Double click the DMG you downloaded (CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon, CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel). A window opens showing a CORTEX icon on the left and an Applications shortcut on the right.
2. Drag the CORTEX icon onto the Applications shortcut. Do not open CORTEX from inside this disk image window.
3. Eject the disk image. In Finder, click the small arrow next to "CORTEX" in the sidebar.
4. Open your Applications folder and double click CORTEX.
5. macOS shows "CORTEX Not Opened. Apple could not verify CORTEX is free of malware". Click Done.
6. Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then scroll down to the Security section.
7. You will see "CORTEX was blocked to protect your Mac". Click Open Anyway. macOS will ask for your password.
8. Open CORTEX from Applications again. This time you get a new dialog with an Open button. Click Open.
9. macOS remembers your approval. No warnings on subsequent launches.

If you are comfortable with Terminal, this single command also clears the quarantine flag after dragging the app to Applications and skips steps 5 through 8:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CORTEX.app

Opening CORTEX on Windows

1. Right click CORTEX-windows.zip and choose Extract All. Pick a folder you can find again (Documents is fine).
2. Open the extracted CORTEX/ folder.
3. Double click CORTEX.exe.
4. The first time you launch, Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. Only the first launch.

If your IT policy blocks unsigned executables and SmartScreen does not give you a Run anyway button, please email the study team and we will work around it.

Opening CORTEX on Linux

Open a terminal in the folder where the tarball is and run:

tar xzf CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
./CORTEX/CORTEX

You can also extract the tarball with your file manager and double click the CORTEX executable inside the extracted folder. Most desktop environments will run it as a binary on first double click.

The Linux build is x86_64 only. The visualization videos that render at the end of a session use ffmpeg. The app bundles its own copy via imageio-ffmpeg, so you do not normally need to install ffmpeg yourself. If the videos do not generate, install your distro's ffmpeg package as a fallback: sudo apt install ffmpeg on Debian or Ubuntu, sudo dnf install ffmpeg on Fedora or RHEL, sudo pacman -S ffmpeg on Arch. Sessions complete cleanly without ffmpeg, just without the visualization MP4s.

Reporting bugs

Anything that crashes, looks visually wrong, is confusing, or feels too slow: please note what you saw and email the study team. That feedback is the whole point of this internal round. If the test froze on you, include the question number it froze on and roughly how far in (5 minutes? 20?). That helps a lot.

cortex-v1.3.6

CORTEX

This is the desktop test taker for our adaptive EEG certification project. You answer a sequence of EEG questions, and an adaptive engine decides what to ask you next based on how you have done so far. The test runs entirely on your computer and uploads only the result CSVs to our Dropbox folder when you finish.

What the test does

We give you EEG recordings and ask you to classify them. The test covers 7 tasks: a binary spike vs no spike question (Yes / No) for short spike clips, and a 6 way pattern classification for longer IIIC recordings (Seizure, LPD, GPD, LRDA, GRDA, Other).

The engine is adaptive. It uses an MCMC (Sequential Monte Carlo) particle cloud to track your skill on each task in real time, and at every step it picks the question that will reduce its uncertainty about you the fastest. It stops asking about a task once it has enough evidence to say PASS, FAIL, or REFER for that task with confidence, then moves on. Spike questions come first as a block. When the engine has resolved the spike task, or has used up all the spike recordings, it transitions to the IIIC block. The final results screen shows a verdict for each of the 7 tasks.

Sessions typically run between about 250 and 500 questions depending on how clearly your answers separate from the cut score on each task. Confident raters finish faster; borderline raters trigger more questions and may reach the longer end of that range.

What is new in v1.3.6

This build raises the bar for how confident the test must be before it gives you a verdict on each category. It now waits for 95 percent confidence, the standard we will use for the published study, rather than the faster internal setting we used before. In practice this means the test is more rigorous and may ask you more questions, so a session can run longer than earlier builds. To support that we also expanded the question bank, so you will see more variety and fewer repeats. If your answers on a category sit right at the boundary, the test is now more likely to return REFER for that category, which simply means it did not gather enough evidence to call it either way. That is the correct, honest outcome and not a failure.

We also improved privacy. When you finish, the results we upload are now de-identified: they are keyed to a random session id, your name is never uploaded, and your institution is replaced by a coded site label. Your name stays only on your own computer. Everything else about how the test works is unchanged.

The Intel and Apple Silicon mac downloads are both still here: CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon and CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel. Pick the one that matches your Mac (the Downloads section below explains how to tell). Windows and Linux are unchanged.

If you downloaded an earlier build

If you took a session on any earlier build (v1.2.x or v1.3.0 through v1.3.5), your results CSVs are still safe in your Dropbox results folder. Those builds used a faster, less strict confidence setting and a smaller question bank, so a re-run on v1.3.6 gives a more rigorous and more comparable result for the study. Please re-download and run the test again on v1.3.6 if you can spare the time; otherwise just send any feedback you have and we will work with what we have.

Downloads

• macOS, Apple Silicon (M1 or newer): CORTEX-mac.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• macOS, Intel: CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• Windows: CORTEX-windows.zip. See "Opening CORTEX on Windows" below.
• Linux: CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz. See "Opening CORTEX on Linux" below.

Not sure which Mac you have? Click the Apple menu in the top left corner and choose About This Mac. If you see a "Chip" line with an Apple M name, download the Apple Silicon DMG. If you see a "Processor" line with an Intel name, download the Intel DMG. The Apple Silicon download will not open on an Intel Mac, so this choice matters.

System requirements

• macOS 12 Monterey or newer. We provide separate downloads for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs; download the one that matches your chip.
• Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64 bit).
• Linux with glibc 2.35 or newer. That covers Ubuntu 22.04 and later, Debian 12 and later, Fedora 36 and later, RHEL 9 and later, and current Arch.
• About 1.2 GB of free disk space for the installed app plus the bundled test bank (the v1.3.6 bank is larger).
• An internet connection to upload results at the end of the session. The test itself runs offline.

You do not need Python installed. Everything the test needs is bundled inside the installer.

Opening CORTEX on macOS

Because we are not yet shipping a signed build (this is an internal pilot, not a public release), macOS will warn you the first time you launch it. The warning is normal and goes away after the one time approval.

Important: drag CORTEX to your Applications folder before you open it. Do not double click CORTEX from inside the disk image window. macOS quietly runs apps from a downloaded location inside a read only "translocated" copy and caches that copy. Old cached copies sometimes get re-run even after you download a fixed update. Installing to Applications avoids this.

1. Double click the DMG you downloaded (CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon, CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel). A window opens showing a CORTEX icon on the left and an Applications shortcut on the right.
2. Drag the CORTEX icon onto the Applications shortcut. Do not open CORTEX from inside this disk image window.
3. Eject the disk image. In Finder, click the small arrow next to "CORTEX" in the sidebar.
4. Open your Applications folder and double click CORTEX.
5. macOS shows "CORTEX Not Opened. Apple could not verify CORTEX is free of malware". Click Done.
6. Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then scroll down to the Security section.
7. You will see "CORTEX was blocked to protect your Mac". Click Open Anyway. macOS will ask for your password.
8. Open CORTEX from Applications again. This time you get a new dialog with an Open button. Click Open.
9. macOS remembers your approval. No warnings on subsequent launches.

If you are comfortable with Terminal, this single command also clears the quarantine flag after dragging the app to Applications and skips steps 5 through 8:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CORTEX.app

Opening CORTEX on Windows

1. Right click CORTEX-windows.zip and choose Extract All. Pick a folder you can find again (Documents is fine).
2. Open the extracted CORTEX/ folder.
3. Double click CORTEX.exe.
4. The first time you launch, Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. Only the first launch.

If your IT policy blocks unsigned executables and SmartScreen does not give you a Run anyway button, please email the study team and we will work around it.

Opening CORTEX on Linux

Open a terminal in the folder where the tarball is and run:

tar xzf CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
./CORTEX/CORTEX

You can also extract the tarball with your file manager and double click the CORTEX executable inside the extracted folder. Most desktop environments will run it as a binary on first double click.

The Linux build is x86_64 only. The visualization videos that render at the end of a session use ffmpeg. The app bundles its own copy via imageio-ffmpeg, so you do not normally need to install ffmpeg yourself. If the videos do not generate, install your distro's ffmpeg package as a fallback: sudo apt install ffmpeg on Debian or Ubuntu, sudo dnf install ffmpeg on Fedora or RHEL, sudo pacman -S ffmpeg on Arch. Sessions complete cleanly without ffmpeg, just without the visualization MP4s.

Reporting bugs

Anything that crashes, looks visually wrong, is confusing, or feels too slow: please note what you saw and email the study team. That feedback is the whole point of this internal round. If the test froze on you, include the question number it froze on and roughly how far in (5 minutes? 20?). That helps a lot.

CORTEX test bank v4 (K=7, 100 spike + 600 IIIC)

v1.3.6 paper-grade internal bank: 600 IIIC (100 per pattern-class: seizure/lpd/gpd/lrda/grda/other) + 100 spike, a stratified-by-s_mean subset of the frozen 35k production bank (build_internal_bank_v1_3_6.py). De-identified curated signals. Downloaded by cortex-release.yml at build time.

cortex-v1.3.5

CORTEX

This is the desktop test taker for our adaptive EEG certification project. You answer a sequence of EEG questions, and an adaptive engine decides what to ask you next based on how you have done so far. The test runs entirely on your computer and uploads only the result CSVs to our Dropbox folder when you finish.

What the test does

We give you EEG recordings and ask you to classify them. The test covers 7 tasks: a binary spike vs no spike question (Yes / No) for short spike clips, and a 6 way pattern classification for longer IIIC recordings (Seizure, LPD, GPD, LRDA, GRDA, Other).

The engine is adaptive. It uses an MCMC (Sequential Monte Carlo) particle cloud to track your skill on each task in real time, and at every step it picks the question that will reduce its uncertainty about you the fastest. It stops asking about a task once it has enough evidence to say PASS, FAIL, or REFER for that task with confidence, then moves on. Spike questions come first as a block. When the engine has resolved the spike task, or has used up all the spike recordings, it transitions to the IIIC block. The final results screen shows a verdict for each of the 7 tasks.

Sessions typically run between 150 and 280 questions depending on how clearly your answers separate from the cut score on each task. Confident raters finish faster; borderline raters trigger more questions.

What is new in v1.3.5

This build changes how the test chooses questions, so it is worth a quick note. Before, once all but one category had been decided, the test would ask that last category many times in a row, which could feel repetitive. Now, after a run of questions on the same category, the test switches to a different category for one question before continuing. You will see a bit more variety, especially late in a session. We checked this carefully in simulation: it does not change how your results are scored, it reaches a decision on every category at least as reliably as before, and if anything it tends to finish a little sooner. Your scoring and the number of categories are unchanged.

The Intel and Apple Silicon mac downloads are both still here: CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon and CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel. Pick the one that matches your Mac (the Downloads section below explains how to tell). Windows and Linux are unchanged.

If you downloaded an earlier v1.2.x

Earlier builds in the v1.2 line had a few issues that this build resolves. If you took a session on v1.2.0 through v1.2.4, your results CSVs are still safe in Dropbox/Apps/CORTEX/results/v1.2.0/, but the spike portion of those sessions may have been incomplete (v1.2.0 never asked spike questions) or the visualization videos may be missing (v1.2.4). Please re-download and run the test again on v1.3.5 if you can spare 10 to 15 minutes; otherwise just send any feedback you have and we will work with what we have.

Downloads

• macOS, Apple Silicon (M1 or newer): CORTEX-mac.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• macOS, Intel: CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• Windows: CORTEX-windows.zip. See "Opening CORTEX on Windows" below.
• Linux: CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz. See "Opening CORTEX on Linux" below.

Not sure which Mac you have? Click the Apple menu in the top left corner and choose About This Mac. If you see a "Chip" line with an Apple M name, download the Apple Silicon DMG. If you see a "Processor" line with an Intel name, download the Intel DMG. The Apple Silicon download will not open on an Intel Mac, so this choice matters.

System requirements

• macOS 12 Monterey or newer. We provide separate downloads for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs; download the one that matches your chip.
• Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64 bit).
• Linux with glibc 2.35 or newer. That covers Ubuntu 22.04 and later, Debian 12 and later, Fedora 36 and later, RHEL 9 and later, and current Arch.
• About 700 MB of free disk space for the installed app plus the bundled test bank.
• An internet connection to upload results at the end of the session. The test itself runs offline.

You do not need Python installed. Everything the test needs is bundled inside the installer.

Opening CORTEX on macOS

Because we are not yet shipping a signed build (this is an internal pilot, not a public release), macOS will warn you the first time you launch it. The warning is normal and goes away after the one time approval.

Important: drag CORTEX to your Applications folder before you open it. Do not double click CORTEX from inside the disk image window. macOS quietly runs apps from a downloaded location inside a read only "translocated" copy and caches that copy. Old cached copies sometimes get re-run even after you download a fixed update. Installing to Applications avoids this.

1. Double click the DMG you downloaded (CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon, CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel). A window opens showing a CORTEX icon on the left and an Applications shortcut on the right.
2. Drag the CORTEX icon onto the Applications shortcut. Do not open CORTEX from inside this disk image window.
3. Eject the disk image. In Finder, click the small arrow next to "CORTEX" in the sidebar.
4. Open your Applications folder and double click CORTEX.
5. macOS shows "CORTEX Not Opened. Apple could not verify CORTEX is free of malware". Click Done.
6. Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then scroll down to the Security section.
7. You will see "CORTEX was blocked to protect your Mac". Click Open Anyway. macOS will ask for your password.
8. Open CORTEX from Applications again. This time you get a new dialog with an Open button. Click Open.
9. macOS remembers your approval. No warnings on subsequent launches.

If you are comfortable with Terminal, this single command also clears the quarantine flag after dragging the app to Applications and skips steps 5 through 8:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CORTEX.app

Opening CORTEX on Windows

1. Right click CORTEX-windows.zip and choose Extract All. Pick a folder you can find again (Documents is fine).
2. Open the extracted CORTEX/ folder.
3. Double click CORTEX.exe.
4. The first time you launch, Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. Only the first launch.

If your IT policy blocks unsigned executables and SmartScreen does not give you a Run anyway button, please email the study team and we will work around it.

Opening CORTEX on Linux

Open a terminal in the folder where the tarball is and run:

tar xzf CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
./CORTEX/CORTEX

You can also extract the tarball with your file manager and double click the CORTEX executable inside the extracted folder. Most desktop environments will run it as a binary on first double click.

The Linux build is x86_64 only. The visualization videos that render at the end of a session use ffmpeg. The app bundles its own copy via imageio-ffmpeg, so you do not normally need to install ffmpeg yourself. If the videos do not generate, install your distro's ffmpeg package as a fallback: sudo apt install ffmpeg on Debian or Ubuntu, sudo dnf install ffmpeg on Fedora or RHEL, sudo pacman -S ffmpeg on Arch. Sessions complete cleanly without ffmpeg, just without the visualization MP4s.

Reporting bugs

Anything that crashes, looks visually wrong, is confusing, or feels too slow: please note what you saw and email the study team. That feedback is the whole point of this internal round. If the test froze on you, include the question number it froze on and roughly how far in (5 minutes? 20?). That helps a lot.

cortex-v1.3.4

CORTEX

This is the desktop test taker for our adaptive EEG certification project. You answer a sequence of EEG questions, and an adaptive engine decides what to ask you next based on how you have done so far. The test runs entirely on your computer and uploads only the result CSVs to our Dropbox folder when you finish.

What the test does

We give you EEG recordings and ask you to classify them. The test covers 7 tasks: a binary spike vs no spike question (Yes / No) for short spike clips, and a 6 way pattern classification for longer IIIC recordings (Seizure, LPD, GPD, LRDA, GRDA, Other).

The engine is adaptive. It uses an MCMC (Sequential Monte Carlo) particle cloud to track your skill on each task in real time, and at every step it picks the question that will reduce its uncertainty about you the fastest. It stops asking about a task once it has enough evidence to say PASS, FAIL, or REFER for that task with confidence, then moves on. Spike questions come first as a block. When the engine has resolved the spike task, or has used up all the spike recordings, it transitions to the IIIC block. The final results screen shows a verdict for each of the 7 tasks.

Sessions typically run between 150 and 280 questions depending on how clearly your answers separate from the cut score on each task. Confident raters finish faster; borderline raters trigger more questions.

What is new in v1.3.4

A small fix to the engine explainer video. The question chart along the bottom used to redraw itself from scratch for every task. Now it draws in once, during the first task, and then stays complete and still while the upper panels move through the rest of the tasks. The other three videos are unchanged, and nothing about the test, the questions, or your results changed.

The Intel and Apple Silicon mac downloads are both still here: CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon and CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel. Pick the one that matches your Mac (the Downloads section below explains how to tell). Windows and Linux are unchanged.

If you downloaded an earlier v1.2.x

Earlier builds in the v1.2 line had a few issues that this build resolves. If you took a session on v1.2.0 through v1.2.4, your results CSVs are still safe in Dropbox/Apps/CORTEX/results/v1.2.0/, but the spike portion of those sessions may have been incomplete (v1.2.0 never asked spike questions) or the visualization videos may be missing (v1.2.4). Please re-download and run the test again on v1.3.4 if you can spare 10 to 15 minutes; otherwise just send any feedback you have and we will work with what we have.

Downloads

• macOS, Apple Silicon (M1 or newer): CORTEX-mac.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• macOS, Intel: CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg. See "Opening CORTEX on macOS" below.
• Windows: CORTEX-windows.zip. See "Opening CORTEX on Windows" below.
• Linux: CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz. See "Opening CORTEX on Linux" below.

Not sure which Mac you have? Click the Apple menu in the top left corner and choose About This Mac. If you see a "Chip" line with an Apple M name, download the Apple Silicon DMG. If you see a "Processor" line with an Intel name, download the Intel DMG. The Apple Silicon download will not open on an Intel Mac, so this choice matters.

System requirements

• macOS 12 Monterey or newer. We provide separate downloads for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs; download the one that matches your chip.
• Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64 bit).
• Linux with glibc 2.35 or newer. That covers Ubuntu 22.04 and later, Debian 12 and later, Fedora 36 and later, RHEL 9 and later, and current Arch.
• About 700 MB of free disk space for the installed app plus the bundled test bank.
• An internet connection to upload results at the end of the session. The test itself runs offline.

You do not need Python installed. Everything the test needs is bundled inside the installer.

Opening CORTEX on macOS

Because we are not yet shipping a signed build (this is an internal pilot, not a public release), macOS will warn you the first time you launch it. The warning is normal and goes away after the one time approval.

Important: drag CORTEX to your Applications folder before you open it. Do not double click CORTEX from inside the disk image window. macOS quietly runs apps from a downloaded location inside a read only "translocated" copy and caches that copy. Old cached copies sometimes get re-run even after you download a fixed update. Installing to Applications avoids this.

1. Double click the DMG you downloaded (CORTEX-mac.dmg for Apple Silicon, CORTEX-mac-intel.dmg for Intel). A window opens showing a CORTEX icon on the left and an Applications shortcut on the right.
2. Drag the CORTEX icon onto the Applications shortcut. Do not open CORTEX from inside this disk image window.
3. Eject the disk image. In Finder, click the small arrow next to "CORTEX" in the sidebar.
4. Open your Applications folder and double click CORTEX.
5. macOS shows "CORTEX Not Opened. Apple could not verify CORTEX is free of malware". Click Done.
6. Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then scroll down to the Security section.
7. You will see "CORTEX was blocked to protect your Mac". Click Open Anyway. macOS will ask for your password.
8. Open CORTEX from Applications again. This time you get a new dialog with an Open button. Click Open.
9. macOS remembers your approval. No warnings on subsequent launches.

If you are comfortable with Terminal, this single command also clears the quarantine flag after dragging the app to Applications and skips steps 5 through 8:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CORTEX.app

Opening CORTEX on Windows

1. Right click CORTEX-windows.zip and choose Extract All. Pick a folder you can find again (Documents is fine).
2. Open the extracted CORTEX/ folder.
3. Double click CORTEX.exe.
4. The first time you launch, Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. Only the first launch.

If your IT policy blocks unsigned executables and SmartScreen does not give you a Run anyway button, please email the study team and we will work around it.

Opening CORTEX on Linux

Open a terminal in the folder where the tarball is and run:

tar xzf CORTEX-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
./CORTEX/CORTEX

You can also extract the tarball with your file manager and double click the CORTEX executable inside the extracted folder. Most desktop environments will run it as a binary on first double click.

The Linux build is x86_64 only. The visualization videos that render at the end of a session use ffmpeg. The app bundles its own copy via imageio-ffmpeg, so you do not normally need to install ffmpeg yourself. If the videos do not generate, install your distro's ffmpeg package as a fallback: sudo apt install ffmpeg on Debian or Ubuntu, sudo dnf install ffmpeg on Fedora or RHEL, sudo pacman -S ffmpeg on Arch. Sessions complete cleanly without ffmpeg, just without the visualization MP4s.

Reporting bugs

Anything that crashes, looks visually wrong, is confusing, or feels too slow: please note what you saw and email the study team. That feedback is the whole point of this internal round. If the test froze on you, include the question number it froze on and roughly how far in (5 minutes? 20?). That helps a lot.