INTRODUCTION/MOTIVATION
This work leverages Apical Isolation (AI) and Apical Drive (AD)[1][2] principles to induce in a model some of the favourable energetic and cognitive effects associated to NREM and REM sleep. Also, we follow the Apical Amplification (AA)[3] concept during awake learning. This way, we added REM to the brain states accessible to the thalamo-cortical spiking model[4][5]...
Modern computational neuroscience seeks to explain the dynamics and function of the brain by constructing models with ever more biological detail. This can, for example, take the form of sophisticated connectivity schemes [1] or involve the simultaneous simulation of multiple brain areas [2]. To enable progress in these studies, the simulation of models needs to become faster, calling for more...
NEST Desktop [1] is a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) which comprises graphical elements for creating and configuring network models, running simulations in the NEST simulator, and visualizing and analyzing the results. It allows students to explore important concepts in computational neuroscience without the need to learn a simulator control language before hand.
NEST Desktop...
Most of the Top500 computer systems and all of the upcoming exascale machines employ GPUs alongside CPUs. To get the most performance out of these architectures, simulation software requires efficient support for both processor types. Decades of simulator development enable the routine simulation of large-scale neuronal network models on thousands of many-core CPUs in parallel [1]; recent GPU...
In recent months, the NEST user documentation website has seen some major overhauls to the structure and visual style. Here we present these changes to the community. The changes focus on discovering and accessing content in different ways, with the goal to make the available documentation more visible to users. A new theme is presented that modernizes the look and boosts discovery of docs....
Recent experimental evidence suggests an active roles of astrocytes in a number of brain functions and demonstrates coordinated neuronal and astrocytic activity in vivo [1]. In the cortex, astrocytes form non-overlapping domains, each containing several hundreds of neurons and ~100,000 synapses [2]. Astrocytic processes are in close contact with synaptic terminals and affect synaptic...
In the project ‘MatCo: Material constraints enabling human cognition’, we use neurobiologically informed network models of cognition and language. These networks implement macroscopic cortical areas and their connectivity along with microscopic ones addressing the connectivity, functionality and plasticity of neurons[1]. Such brain constrained models enable studying cognition, natural language...
NESTML is a concise modeling language for neuron and synapse models. It comes with a software toolchain to generate efficient simulation code for different target platforms.
Previously, all used neuron-synapse combinations involving synapse models with a dependency on post-synaptic variables, such as spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP), had to be provided manually to NESTML before...
