In my experiment I am displaying lots of different gratings. To save time during the experiment's execution, I'm pre-drawing the corresponding textures and keep them in a buffer. However, this takes about 10-20 seconds depending on how many stimuli the run uses, and how fast the machine is.

I was wondering whether there is a way of storing the pre-drawn textures on the hard drive and just have them read in?

Here is the current code:

    tic
    stimulus_matrix = [];
      for ifrequencies = 1:length(frequencies)
        for iphase = 1:length(phases)
            for icontrast_manipulation = 1:length(contrast_manipulation)
                for icontrast_values = 1:length(contrast_values(1,:))

grating = makeStimulus(contrast_values(icontrast_manipulation,icontrast_values),grating_size_degrees,phases(iphase),frequencies(ifrequencies,1));

stimulus_matrix(ifrequencies,iphase,icontrast_manipulation,icontrast_values) = Screen('MakeTexture', my_window, grating);

Screen('FillOval', stimulus_matrix(ifrequencies,iphase,icontrast_manipulation,icontrast_values), background, CenterRect(ovalRect,gratingRect));

                % Display a progress bar during buffering
                % code for progress bar removed for clarity

            end
        end
    end
end

you can use

save('mydata.mat',stimulus_matrix);

and when you need the matrix, you can load it.

load mydata.mat;

then use stimulus_matrix as you want.