Dear eric,

Although i had afni folder in my path, but as you said i added the folder to my startup.m file:
export PATH=$PATH:/Users/pouya_gh/abin

and just to let you know that my matlab knows where startup.m is i executed the following line:
which startup
/Users/pouya_gh/matlab/startup.m

but i still get this:
unix('3dcopy') /bin/bash: 3dcopy: command not found

and i wonder why this happen.

BTW, Daniel Geln suggested to use 3dcopy outside Matlab to copy the data to AFNI format and then proceed with the BrikLoad function.
http://afni.nimh.nih.gov/afni/community/...

One more point: Obviously, i can run all of the afni commands in my mac terminal.

any help will be appreciated
Best,
Pouya