So far we've looked at how to simulate a simple LIF model neuron and a complex Hodgkin-Huxley model neuron. The LIF neuron is computationally simple but physiologically implausible, while Hodgkin-Huxley gives us a very good representation of actual neural dynamics but is parameter-heavy and computationally expensive. An intriguing compromise between the two exists -- one that can generate a wide variety of observed neural spiking behavior while doing so with limited computational demand. It is called the quadratic integrate-and-fire model neuron, or simply Izhikevich neuron. Read the rest of this entry »
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Neural Modeling with Python (Part 3)
| February 2, 2011Comments: 1 CommentCategories: Computing, Neurobiology -
Why simulating a cat when we can simulate a human (or even more!)
| November 26, 2009
When I read (and wrote about) the recent controversy between Modha and Markram, I had this inescapable déjà vu feeling....weird, where did I hear that somebody already simulated a "brain" of the scale of the human brain? Of course!.... Eugene Izhikevich, a very bright (and VERY funny) neuroscientist that, in 2007, visited our center CELEST. During that visit, he showed what at that time (in 2005, and may be up to today) was one of the "largest scale" neural simulation. Read the rest of this entry »Comments: Leave a commentAlso tagged IBM, spiking neurons -
What is a neuron, anyway?
| September 9, 2009
In collaboration with Robert Thijs KozmaRobert and I thought that it would be nice to finally define what the main building block of what we are talking about is! What are neurons, and how do they work? How do these relatively simple processing elements give rise to higher perceptual and cognitive functions? We are not going to answer these big questions in this post, but we have to start somewhere…. Let’s take a closer look at what is a neuron, how a simple mathematical model can capture a remarkable spectrum of neuron’s behavior, and let’s look at some simple MATLAB code that would allow neurdons to run a neuron in MATLAB at the end of this post. Read the rest of this entry »