The NEST Initiative is excited to invite everyone interested in Neural Simulation Technology
and the NEST Simulator to the virtual NEST Conference 2025. The NEST Conference provides an
opportunity for the NEST Community to meet, exchange success stories, swap advice, learn about
current developments in and around NEST spiking network simulation and its application. We
particularly encourage young scientists to participate in the conference!
The NEST Conference 2025 will again be held as a virtual event on Tuesday/Wednesday 17/18 June.
Laconeu 2025 - Latin-American Summer School in Computational Neuroscience
17-18 June 2025, Valparaiso, Chile
The VII LACONEU 2025 School is organized to pursued the advancement of comprehension and
application of computational neuroscience in Latin America to bridge theoretical neuroscience
with computational methodologies and experimental research. In the school we seeks to
cultivate interactions among young scientists, researchers, and students, equipping them
with essential skills and knowledge in computational neuroscience, thus promoting innovation
and excellence within the field.
Application-oriented hackathon is an in-person event allowing NEST users to bring their ideas for new NEST features
and get started implementing them with the help of experienced NEST developers.
New publication about the significance of software in science
None
Hocquet A., Wieber F., Gramelsberger G., Hinsen K., Diesmann M., Pasquini Santos F.,
Landström C., Peters B., Kasprowicz D., Borrelli A., Roth P., Lee CAL., Olteanu A. & Böschen S.
(2024) Software in science is ubiquitous yet overlooked. Nat Comput Sci.
10.1038/s43588-024-00651-2
Markus Diesmann in an interview about the complex nature of software in research and the
attention it needs to be given to it:
https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/news/archive/announcements/2024/software-in-research-2013-a-conversation-with-prof-markus-diesmann
New article: Software in science is ubiquitous yet overlooked
01 July 2024, Nat Comput Sci
Software - like NEST - is much more than just code. An article about the impact on science, but also the complexity of software in science.
Hocquet A., Wieber F., Gramelsberger G., Hinsen K., Diesmann M. et al. Software in science is ubiquitous yet overlooked. Nat Comput Sci (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-024-00651-2
On 17th and 18th June, the NEST Conference 2024 brought together over 50 participants from around the world to discuss the latest developments and applications in neural simulation technology in general and NEST simulation code in particular.
The NEST Conference provides a unique opportunity for the NEST Community to connect, share success stories, offer advice, and learn about the latest advancements in neural simulation technology. We are committed to fostering a vibrant and inclusive community and encourage young scientists to participate and contribute to the conference.
A diverse group of keynote speakers, Tadashi Yamazaki from the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, Behnam Ghazinouri from Ruhr University Bochum, Benedetta Gambosi from Politecnico di Milano, and Tobias Gemmeke from RWTH Aachen University gave exciting lectures on simulation technology as well as neuronal network modeling.
As a virtual conference, the NEST Conference 2024 enabled wide participation from around the world. Since its inception in 2016, the conference has grown into a significant event for the NEST community, providing a platform for collaboration, innovation, and knowledge sharing.
For more information, please visit the conference website (https://nest-simulator.org/conference-2024) which also contains the booklet with the programme and abstracts.
The NEST Initiative is excited to invite everyone interested in Neural
Simulation Technology and the NEST Simulator to the virtual NEST
Conference 2023. The NEST Conference provides an opportunity for the NEST
Community to meet, exchange success stories, swap advice, learn about
current developments in and around NEST spiking network simulation
and its application. We particularly encourage young scientists to
participate in the conference!
An on-site tutorial at the 31st Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting -
From single-cell modeling to large-scale network dynamics with NEST Simulator
NEST developers held an full day online tutorial as a CNS satellite event.
Title - 'From single-cell modeling to large-scale network dynamics with
NEST Simulator'. Tutors - Charl Linssen, Agnes Korcsak-Gorzo, Jasper Albers,
Pooja Babu, Joshua Böttcher, Jessica Mitchell, Willem Wybo, Jens
Bruchertseifer, Sebastian Spreizer, and Dennis Terhorst.
The NEST Initiative is excited to invite everyone interested in Neural Simulation Technology and the NEST Simulator
to the virtual NEST Conference 2022. The NEST Conference provides an opportunity for the NEST Community to meet,
exchange success stories, swap advice, learn about current developments in and around NEST spiking network
simulation and its application. We particularly encourage young scientists to participate in the conference!
Johanna Senk and Jasper Albers gave a live sessiom and ramped up from basic
concepts to recent research on spatially organized neuronal network models
with the simulator NEST. They used NEST Desktop 3.1.4 and NEST 3.3 in the
EBRAINS_experimental_release in the EBRAINS lab.
Tutorial by Charl Linssen (JARA-Institute, Jülich, Germany), Barna Zajzon, Sebastian Spreizer (University of Trier, Germany), Jasper Albers, and Dennis Terhorst
NEST Conference 2021: A Virtual Forum for Users and Developers
28/29 June 2021, Virtual
The NEST Initiative is excited to invite everyone interested in Neural Simulation Technology and the NEST Simulator
to the virtual NEST Conference 2021. The NEST Conference provides an opportunity for the NEST Community to meet,
exchange success stories, swap advice, learn about current developments in and around NEST spiking network
simulation and its application.
Due to the current restrictions on events and travel, the NEST Conference 2021 will be held as a virtual conference
on Monday/Tuesday 28/29 June followed by a virtual NEST Hackathon until Friday 2 July.
The online Bernstein Conference proved immensely popular this year. More participants (2782) attended from a much wider international community (63 countries) than ever before in its history. NEST was represented in four posters and at the HBP booth session on spiking simulation models and tools.
References
Konradi S, Mitchell J, Terhorst D, Graber S, Linssen C, Eppler JM (2020) Concept for user-level documentation of a neuronal network simulator. Bernstein Conference 2020. doi: 10.12751/nncn.bc2020.0146
Kurth A, Finnerty J, Terhorst D, Pronold J, Senk J, Diesmann M (2020) Sub realtime simulation of a full density cortical microcircuit model on a single compute node. Bernstein Conference 2020. doi: 10.12751/nncn.bc2020.0221
Senk J, Kriener B, Djurfeldt M, Voges N, Schüttler L, Gramelsberger G, Plesser HE, Diesmann M, van Albada SJ (2020) Systematic textual and graphical description of connectivity. Bernstein Conference 2020. doi: 10.12751/nncn.bc2020.0263
Spreizer S, Senk J, Rotter S, Diesmann M, Weyers B (2020) NEST Desktop: A web-based GUI for the NEST Simulator. Bernstein Conference 2020. doi: 10.12751/nncn.bc2020.0266
Workshop:
New interfaces for teaching with NEST: hands-on with the NEST Desktop GUI and NESTML code generation
18 July 2020, Virtual
The workshop will provide hands-on experience how the combination of NEST Desktop and NESTML can be used in the modern workflow of a computational neuroscientist.
NEST Conference 2020: A Virtual Forum for Users and Developers
29/30 June 2020, Virtual
NEST Conference went online, and it will not be the last time
This year, the NEST Conference, organized by Hans Ekkehard Plesser and Susanne Kunkel from NMBU and colleagues from INM-6, took place virtually on 29th and 30th of June followed by a three-day hackathon. Although the virtual format of the conference faced us with new challenges and we missed the social activities, the conference was a great success with more participants than ever joining from around the globe. For more details, please visit
Course: OCNC 2020, Okinawa, Japan - Canceled due to COVID-19
29 June - 16 July 2020, Okinawa, Japan
Renato Duarte will join this year’s OIST Computational Neuroscience course as the NEST tutor. The program will be
held at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University in Okinawa, Japan.
New paper using Nest: Efficient Communication in Distributed Simulations of Spiking Neuronal Networks With Gap Junctions
05 May 2020
Jordan J, Helias M, Diesmann M and Kunkel S (2020)
Frontiers in Neuroinformatics 14:12
Investigating the dynamics and function of large-scale spiking neuronal networks with realistic numbers of synapses
is made possible today by state-of-the-art simulation code that scales to the largest contemporary supercomputers.
However, simulations that involve electrical interactions, also called gap junctions, besides chemical synapses
scale only poorly due to a communication scheme that collects global data on each compute node. In comparison to
chemical synapses, gap junctions are far less abundant. To improve scalability we exploit this sparsity by
integrating an existing framework for continuous interactions with a recently proposed directed communication
scheme for spikes. Using a reference implementation in the NEST simulator we demonstrate excellent scalability of
the integrated framework, accelerating large-scale simulations with gap junctions by more than an order of
magnitude. This allows, for the first time, the efficient exploration of the interactions of chemical and electrical
coupling in large-scale neuronal networks models with natural synapse density distributed across thousands of
compute nodes.
Interview: Markus Diesmann in conversation with Laborjournal
09 February 2020
Markus Diesmann discusses the difference between computational models and biological nervous systems in an
interview with Henrik Müller from Laborjournal.
The text is available only in German.
New press release: Rauschende Chips: Wie neuromorphe Hardware von Erkenntnissen aus der Hirnforschung profitieren kann
5 February 2020, Jülich, Germany
Neuromorphic chips, which are modelled on the human brain, offer enormous potential. Especially for tasks in the
field of artificial intelligence (AI), they are considered a promising and efficient alternative. But many questions
are still open. One major sticking point: To this day, it is still not at all clear which mechanisms and principles
make the great model - our brain - so efficient.
NEST 2.20.0 released including 454 commits in 82 pull requests by 25 developers since NEST 2.18.0.
It brings a wide range of improvements, including
- generalized leaky integrate-and-fire neuron models developed by the Allen Institute (Teeter et al, 2018)
- STDP synapses with nearest-neighbor spike paring schemes
- improved documentation on Read The Docs (https://nest-simulator.readthedocs.io/en/latest/).
The Hackathon on CEREBELLUM MODELLING will illustrate cerebellum models and provide tutorials for their
development and applications.
Charles Linssen (FZ Juelich, Germany) gives a tutorial about 'NEST simulator: single point neuron and networks'.
NEST was represented at the eighth edition of the Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience (LASCON VIII)
in São Paulo, Brazil.
Sacha van Albada's lectures dicussed simplified neuron models and networks. Renan Oliveira Shimour's tutorials
introduced students to NEST, guiding them through the example code, balanced random network, topology functions and
NESTML.
New paper using Nest: Deterministic networks for probabilistic computing
08 October 2019
Jordan J., Petrovici MA., Breitwieser O., Schemmel J., Meier K., Diesmann M., Tetzlaff T. (2019)
Sci Rep 9, 18303
Neuronal network models of high-level brain functions such as memory recall and reasoning often rely on the presence of some form of noise. The majority of these models assumes that each neuron in the functional network is equipped with its own private source of randomness, often in the form of uncorrelated external noise. In vivo, synaptic background input has been suggested to serve as the main source of noise in biological neuronal networks. However, the finiteness of the number of such noise sources constitutes a challenge to this idea. Here, we show that shared-noise correlations resulting from a finite number of independent noise sources can substantially impair the performance of stochastic network models. We demonstrate that this problem is naturally overcome by replacing the ensemble of independent noise sources by a deterministic recurrent neuronal network. By virtue of inhibitory feedback, such networks can generate small residual spatial correlations in their activity which, counter to intuition, suppress the detrimental effect of shared input. We exploit this mechanism to show that a single recurrent network of a few hundred neurons can serve as a natural noise source for a large ensemble of functional networks performing probabilistic computations, each comprising thousands of units.
Workshop: NSG and HPAC - Large Scale Simulations and Data Processing
19 October 2019
The Neuroscience Gateway Portal (NSG https://www.nsgportal.org/) enables neuroscientists to do large scale simulations and data processing on the US NSF funded supercomputers and academic cloud resources located at various academic supercomputing centers. It eliminates administrative and technical barriers by providing free supercomputing time to users and easy access to widely used neuroscience tools like NEST.
Workshop: Brain Circuit Insight: From brain circuit models to brain circuit insights, Bernstein Conference 2019
17-18 September 2019
Susanne Kunkel presented the 'Tool: NEST', Markus Diesmann talked about the 'cortical microcircuit model at celluar resolution' and Sacha van Albada explained the 'Use case: Multiarea - NEST'
Markus Diesmann, creator of NEST, accepted as a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz (Germany)
08 August 2019
The Academy of Sciences and Literature is a nationally oriented association of personalities from the fields of science, literature and music. It serves to cultivate the sciences, literature and music and thus contributes to the preservation and support of the cultural heritage. The Academy of Sciences and Literature has accepted six new members, including neuroscientist Markus Diesmann.
New press release: Hidden Dynamics Detected in Neuronal Networks
23 July 2019
Neuronal networks in the brain can process information particularly well when they are close to a critical point - or so brain researchers had assumed based on theoretical considerations. However, experimental investigations of brain activity revealed much fewer indicators of such critical states than expected. Scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University have now proposed a possible explanation. They showed that neuronal networks can assume a second, previously unknown critical mode whose hidden dynamics are almost impossible to measure with conventional methods.
New Paper using NEST: Propagation of orientation selectivity in a spiking network model of layered primary visual cortex
19 July 2019
Merkt B, Schüßler F, Rotter S (2019) Propagation of orientation selectivity in a spiking network model of layered primary visual cortex. PLOS Computational Biology 15(7): e1007080. DOI: 10 .1371/journal.pcbi.1007080
CNS 2019 - Talk: Towards Reproducible Generation and De-scription of Network Connectivity
17 July 2019, Barcelona, Spain
Johanna Senk talks about 'Towards Reproducible Generation and De-scription of Network Connectivity' during the 'Workshop on generative connectomics and plasticity' at the 28th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS*2019, Barcelona, Spain.
CNS 2019 - Talk: Open Cortical Multi-Area Model at Cellular Resolution
17 July 2019, Barcelona, Spain
'Open Cortical Multi-Area Model at Cellular Resolution' is Markus Diesmann's topic at the 'Neural Multiplexed Coding, Coexistence of Multimodal Coding Strategies in Neural Systems' workshop held on the 28th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS*2019, Barcelona, Spain.
New press release: The beneficial effects of sleep in a cerebral simulation
09 July 2019
Sleep is essential in all animal species, although this decreases the time available for seemingly more productive activities and notwithstanding the increased dangers arising from exposure to predation and environmental hazards. So, why do we sleep? For their investigation the researchers made use of the NEST simulator.
NEST 2.18.0 provides a number of new neuron and plasticity models and additional functionality. It improves memory allocation and performance during network construction. It includes a number of bug fixes and is the first release that can be installed via aptitude and in a Conda environment directly from conda-forge. NEST 2.18.0 is the result of 116 pull-requests (1128 commits) by 31 developers since NEST 2.16.0 which was released on 2018-08-21.
NEST Conference 2019 - A Forum for Users and Developers
24-25 June 2019, NMBU, Ås, Norway
The NEST Conference provides an opportunity for the NEST Community to meet, exchange success stories, swap advice, learn about current developments in and around NEST spiking network simulation and its application.
Markus Diesmann. Susanne Kunkel, Steve Furber and Mihai Petrovici explained 'Computational Neuroscience and Neuromorphic Computing: Foundations of Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence'
New press release: The Scientific Case for Brain Simulations
3 June 2019
A wide variety of experimental techniques are used in neuroscience today to gain insight into neural function from measured brain signals. But to understand the complex nonlinear dynamics at play in the brain and to explain how the underlying activity gives rise to the signals, computational modeling is required.
New publication: The Scientific Case for Brain Simulations
Gaute T. Einevoll, Alain Destexhe, Markus Diesmann, Torbjørn V. Ness, Hans E. Plesser, Felix Schürmann 22 May 2019
The authors describe the need for open general-purpose simulation engines that can run a multitude of different candidate models of the brain at different levels of biological detail.
The 'Big Switch on' is done for SpiNNaker. 1,000,000 cores are active now. Ssacha van Albada reported about ‘SpiNNaker as a Tool for Neuroscience Modelling – A Big Little Circuit, and the Fallout’ on the unveiling event.
EITN workshop - Are we building the right user-level documentation?
21-22 November 2018, Paris, France
At this EITN workshop, current and prospective users of the simulation engines NEST, SpiNNaker and BrainScaleS had the opportunity to share their experience with the software, and provided feedback and ideas regarding user-level documentation. Lots of fruitful discussions took place regarding the best concepts for an effective user (and developer) level documentation for spiking neuronal network simulation engines.
Markus Diesmann demonstrates, on the example of a multi-scale network model of one hemisphere of macaque vision-related cortex, the progress we made in the HBP in technology and in transforming the way computational neuroscience is done.
Markus Diesmann was interviewed by the German radio station 'kulturradio RBB' about "A new algorithm helps to better understand the brain". He reported about a newly developed algorithm, which finally manages to represent whole brain processes rather than only small subsections of the brain.
Markus Diesmann held a tutorial called "Reusable publication of a cortical multi-area model at cellular resolution" at Workshop "Integrative Theories of Cortical Function"
The NEST conference was a huge success. Many fantastic talks and interesting discussions took place regarding scientific and technical developments for the NEST simulator.
05 March 2018, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Ås, Norway
Hans Ekkehard Plesser organized a NEST Hackathon.
Ready for Exascale: researchers find algorithm for large-scale brain simulations on next-generation supercomputers
19 February 2018, Jülich, Germany
The breakthrough reported in the recent publication is a new way of constructing the neuronal network in the supercomputer. Due to the algorithms, the memory required on each node no longer increases with network size. At the beginning of the simulation, the new technology allows the nodes to exchange information about who needs to send neuronal activity data to whom. Once this knowledge is available, the exchange of neuronal activity data between nodes can be organized such that a node only receives the information it requires. An additional Bit for each neuron in the network is no longer necessary.
Original publication: Jakob Jordan, Tammo Ippen, Moritz Helias, Itaru Kitayama, Mitsuhisa Sato, Jun Igarashi, Markus Diesmann and Susanne Kunkel
Extremely Scalable Spiking Neuronal Network Simulation Code: From Laptops to Exascale Computers. Front. Neuroinform., 16 February 2018 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fninf.2018.00002
24 November 2017, Warsaw University, Warsaw, Poland
NEST Initiative representative from Forschungszentrum Jülich gives a NEST and a NESTML turorial. NEST Tutorial
This workshop will enable students to build on the experience developed over the past decades and to benefit from the know-how implemented in the NEST - Neuronal Simulation Technology to reproducibly perform accurate simulations. NESTML Tutorial
The workshop provides students with concepts and hands on experience in this language to facilitate a seamless workflow between theory and simulation.
Note: only participants registered for the conference can attend the workshops
Workshop "Macht uns die Digitalisierung zum Supermenschen?"
15 November 2017, Zurich, Switzerland
Markus Diesmann explained a little bit the NEST simulation technology in his talk 'The Human Brain Project – wo stehen wir in der Entwicklung bei der Nachbildung des menschlichen Gehirns?'
David Dahmen give a tutorial - Simulating large-scale spiking neuronal networks with NEST
The tutorial starts with an introduction to large-scale neuronal networks, giving examples of existing models and identifying some challenges these networks pose for modeling and simulation.
This is followed by an introduction to the NEural Simulation Tool (NEST), shedding light on its design principles and providing an overview of its features. To familiarize participants with the basic usage of NEST, some simple networks are programmed in hands-on exercises.
19-23 June 2017, Max-Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany
Markus Diesmann talked about 'The multi-scale structure and dynamics of macaque visual cortex at cellular and synaptic resolution' and the simulation with NEST.
We're extremely happy to bring you NEST 2.12.0 which concludes the NEST 2 series. This release is the result of 1763 repository commits from 169 pull requests by 40 developers since v2.10.0.
The release brings numerous refinements, bug fixes and improvements in all areas of NEST. For a full list of changes and download links, see
All users are encouraged to upgrade and adapt their simulation scripts to the changes in the user interface at this point in time to benefit from the improvements in the new version.
HBP student conference 2017
08-10 February 2017, Vienna, Austria
NestMC is a new multicompartment neural network simulator currently under development as a collaboration between the Neuroscience SimLab at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, Barcelona Supercomputing Center and the Swiss National Supercomputing Center under the aegis of the NEST Initiative. Wouter Klijn talked about 'NestMC: A morphologically detailed neural network simulator for modern high performance computer'.
Code Generation from Model Description Languages II
7.12.2016 - 9.12.2016 Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Geb. 16.4, Germany
The main goal of the workshop is to provide an overview of available techniques and languages to specify neuron models on different levels of detail. The languages presented include NeuroML, NineML, NESTML, PyNN and Brian. Furthermore, the workshops introduces how executable code for a specific target platform can be generated for these descriptive approaches.
1st NeuroMat Course on Parallel and GPU Programming for Neuroscience
5.12.2016 - 7.12.2016, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
The NeuroMat High-Performance Computing (HPC) Center hosted its First Course on Parallel and GPU Programming for Neuroscience, which was followed by a Mini Workshop on Computational Neuroscience.
During the workshop Sacha van Albada gaves an "introduction to NEST, creating neuron models with NESTML, parallel simulations with NEST".
The Workshop provides an opportunity for the NEST Community to meet, exchange success stories, swap advice, learn about current developments in and around NEST and spiking network simulation and application. This year, the workshop will focus on the use of spiking networks in Neurorobotics and will kindly be hosted by FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik in Karlsruhe, Germany, in collaboration with the Human Brain Project and Forschungszentrum Jülich. The workshop is supported by the Human Brain Project Education Office.
Abigail Morrison uses NEST for practical exercises in her course „Simulation of Biological Neuronal Networks“
Workshop, Vision over vision: man, monkey, machine, and network models
3-4.10.2016, Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), Osaka University
Markus Diesmann explained the „NEST – Maximum network size“ in his talk „Brain-scale simulations at cellular and synaptic resolution“
Bernstein Network Conference Satellite Workshop High-Performance Computing in Neuroscience
20.09.2016 - 21.09.2016 Berlin, Germany
Wolfram Schenck and Susanne Kunkel talks about a "Dry-Run Mode for NEST: Proiling Large-Scale Simulations on a Single Node" and Ben Cumming give a talk about "Nest-MC: GPU multicompartment modeler"
NEST ist ready for use by neuroscience was one conclusions in Markus Diensmanns talk.
MONA2 – Modelling Neural Activity
22-24.06.2016, Waikoloa, Hawaii
Markus Diesmann talks about the „Progress and challenges in bottom-up network modeling“.
OCNC Tutorial 2016
16.06.2016
Espen Hagen explains „Modeling networks of spiking neurons using NEST (v2.10.0)“.
PASC16 Conference, MS28 Level of Detail in Brain Modeling
8-10.06.2016, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
Markus Diesmann talks about the „Technology for Brain Scale Simulation at Cellular Resolution“
Defense of doctoral thesis
24.05.2016, Fakultät für Mathematik, Informatik und Naturwissenschaften, RWTH Aachen
As part of his defense „Modeling and simulation of multi-scale spiking neuronal networks“ Maximilian Schmidt explains the use of „Simulation technology: NEST 4g“.
Workshop on High-Performance Computing, Stochastic Modeling and Database in Neuroscience
24.04.2016 - 29.04.2016 NeuroMat, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
Makus Diesmann participate in a round table on “Big science: the case for neuroscience”
and give a talk about NEST.
The Human Brain Project is releasing the first components, services and tools of its 6 ICT Platforms to the scientific community (Neuroinformatics, Brain Simulation, High Performance Analytics and Computing, Medical Informatics, Neuromorphic Computing, Neurorobotics).
NEST technology will be presented at the platformsSP6, SP7and SP10.
Johanna Senk, Alper Yegenoglu and a great team create a new collab on the Human Brain Project Platform.
The aim of this collab is to validate and compare data obtained by large scale network simulations implemented in the NEST simulator running on the JUQUEEN system here in Juelich. The same model is implemented with the Neuromorphic Hardware SpiNNaker.
The results are collected through the collab and will be evaluated by the Elephant library using the JURECA system.
Demo shown as part of the release of the Human Brain Project’s (HBP) High Performance Analytics & Computing Platform (HPAC) on 30th March 2016:
Cortical microcircuit simulation collab on HBP Platform
30.03.2016 - 30.03.2016 online
Johanna Senk, Alper Yegenoglu and a great team create a new collab on the Human Brain Project Platform.
The Collab demonstrates interactive and collaborative research with a full scale neuronal network model. Full scale means that the model represents a particular biological circuit with neurons and synapses at their natural density. The model ( Potjans, T. C., & Diesmann, M. (2014) Cerebral Cortex 24(3):785-806 ) represents 1 mm3 of cortex and contains around 100,000 spiking point-neurons connected by around 1 billion synapses in four cortical layers.
We’re happy to bring you NEST 2.10.0, which contains 303 repository
commits by 25 developers since v2.8.0. The most notable changes over
v2.8.0 are:
* Support for simulations of gap junctions (see Jan Hahne et al., 2015)
* Framework for structural plasticity (see Markus Butz et al., 2013
and Markus Butz et al., 2014)
* Full support for the K computer (just in case you found one under
your Christmas tree ;-))
All users are encouraged to upgrade and adapt their simulation scripts
to the changes in the user interface at this point in time to benefit
from the improvements in the new version.
For a full list of changes and download links, see
During the workshop, we will give a general introduction to model creation for NEST and an in-depth introduction to the concepts and application of NESTML.
NEST live media image with NEST 2.8.0 is available
26.11.2015 - 26.11.2015
A new NEST live media image with NEST 2.8.0 is available, including Brian, LFPy, MUSIC, NEST, NEURON and PyNN.
It is provided in the OVA format, suitable, for example, for importing
into VirtualBox. Useful for trying out NEST without installing it on
your computer, especially for Windows and Mac OS X users.
“effzett” the magazine of Juelich Researche Centre published an article for the public and ecision makers on a recent finding on the restricted scalability of neuronal networks.
http://www.fz-juelich.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/PORTAL/DE/publikationen/effzett/effzett_2015_3.pdf (until now only available in german)
The original work uses NEST technology to verify the analytical work.
http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004490
SFN – Booth presentation of NEST and elephant in the HBP collaboratory
21.10.2015 - 21.10.2015 Chicago, USA
Michale Denker explained how working in integrative loops unlocks the potential of the HBP approach.
Using the Neuroscience Gateway Portal for Parallel Simulations
17.10.2015 - 17.10.2015 Chicago, USA
Hannah Bos and Alex Peyser, both core NEST developers, will present recent and upcoming NEST developments.
A Satellite Symposium at the 2015 Society for Neuroscience Meeting
Workshop “Challenges in Linking Statistical and Mathematical Neuroscience”
14.10.2015 - 15.10.2015 Hariri Institute, Boston University, MA, USA
Markus Diesmann talks about the “Role of biophysical modeling”.
HBP Summit 2015: NEST + Elephant: An integrated simulation-analysis workflow
27.09.2015 - 30.09.2015 Madrid, Spain
In a tutorial session, we demonstrate via the HBP Collaboratory how to combine the NEST and Elephant ( http://neuralensemble.org/elephant/ ) tools in order to perform a neuronal network simulation and subsequently analyze the resulting data.
NEST: Johanna Senk and Jakob Jordan; Elephant: Michael Denker, Alper Yegenoglu, Pietro Quaglio and Vahid Rostami
Release of NEST 2.8.0
27.09.2015 - 27.09.2015
NEST 2.8.0 is distributed under the GNU General Public License version
2 (or later). This version marks the completion of our development
efforts during the HBP ramp up phase and consists of 290 repository
checkins by 25 developers since 2.6.0. The most notable changes are:
The new connection framework introduced in NEST 2.6.0 can now handle
parameter arrays for the ‘all-to-all’ and ‘one-to-one’ rules.
A new propagator for integrate-and-fire neurons correctly handles
the case where membrane and synapse time constants are similar or
the same.
Better documentation and much extended examples for PyNEST improve
the discoverability of NEST’s features.
All users are encouraged to upgrade and adapt their simulation scripts
to the changes in the user interface at this point in time to benefit
from the improvements in the new version.
For a full list of changes and download links, see
Markus Diesmann talks about NEST as an exascale application at the 596. WE-Heraeus-Seminar “Science Applications for Exascale Computing” September 7-9th 2015, Physikzentrum Bad Honnef, Germany
Public resonance on NEST
08.09.2015 - 08.09.2015
Interest in NEST is not only in the professional world. Large-scale projects such as the simulation of the entire human brain and the development of the necessary software NEST arouse the curiosity of a wider audience.
CNS Workshop Supercomputational Neuroscience – tools and applications
28.07.2015 - 28.07.2015 Stockholm, Schweden
Susanne Kunkel Talks about “Meeting the memory challenges of brain-scale network simulation “.
CNS 2015: NEST Tutorials and Workshops
18.07.2015 - 23.07.2015
T6: Interfaces in Computational Neuroscience Software: Combined use of the tools NEST, CSA and MUSIC
Jochen Eppler, Jan Morén, Mikael Djurfeldt http://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2015-tutorials#t6
Markus Diesmann talks about “Simulation of brain-scale neuronal networks at cellular and synaptic resolution “
First NEST User Workshop
20.04.2015 - 22.04.2015
Some 30 NEST Users and Developers attended the First NEST USER Workshop held at the Human Brain Project headquarters at Campus Biotech in Geneva, Switzerland, at the end of April, organized by the NEST Initiative with support of the HBP Education Program. The workshop combined user presentations of computational neuroscience projects based on NEST with technical tutorials, especially on writing neuron and synapse models and the impending transition of NEST source code to GitHub. We also launched the new websites for the NEST Initiative, the NEST Simulator and the nest::Developer Space.
1st community workshop HBP network simulator: “Are we building the right thing? – Requirements from theory for simulation environments and neuromorphic computing”. This workshop presents the capabilities of the HBP network simulator and the corresponding PyNN expressions as available at the end of the ramp-up phase of the HBP in March 2016.
NineML Standardization Committee
20.02.2015 - 20.02.2015
Jochen M. Eppler becomes a member of the NineML Standardization Committee, which is developing a simulator independent model description language. See http://nineml.net for details.
Workshop Progress on Brain-Like Computing
5.02.2015 - 5.02.2015 Stockholm, Sweden
Susanne Kunkel talks about “Supercomputer simulations of spiking neuronal networks”.
Workshop on “Media for Simulating the Brain”
21.01.2015 - 21.01.2015 Lueneburg mecs
Markus Diesmann talks about “Computational neuroscience emerging from the dark ages”.
NEST researchers contribute a chapter to a new book on Brain-Inspired Computing in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.
December 4 – 5, 2014
Markus Diesmann talks about „Computational network modeling“ at the BMFZ Meeting Brain networks – challenges and perspectives, Düsseldorf, Haus der Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany
December 2, 2014
IBM and Juelich publish a movie on the future of computing featuring NEST http://bit.ly/IBM_Julich
Together with colleagues from Japan, the Juelich groups publish “Spiking network simulation code for petascale supercomputers” describing a technology capable of orchestrating the full memory of petascale supercomputers like the K computer and JUQUEEN in a single simulation.
October 10, 2014
Together with colleagues from Japan, the Juelich groups publish “Spiking network simulation code for petascale supercomputers” describing a technology capable of orchestrating the full memory of petascale supercomputers like the K computer and JUQUEEN in a single simulation.
Moritz Helias and colleagues show in PLoS Computational Biology that also in local networks of binary neurons the correlation structure results from the recurrent dynamics. NEST technology for the simulation of binary neurons is used to explore the validity of results obtained in the limit of infinite network size for the biological range of network sizes.
January 16, 2014
Moritz Helias and colleagues show in PLoS Computational Biology that also in local networks of binary neurons the correlation structure results from the recurrent dynamics. NEST technology for the simulation of binary neurons is used to explore the validity of results obtained in the limit of infinite network size for the biological range of network sizes.
January 7, 2014
Birgit Kriener and colleagues explore in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience the dependence of pattern formation in spiking ring networks on the input current regime. The authors use the NEST technology for spike interaction in continuous time for high-precision simulations not limited by a temporal grid.
January 7, 2014
Birgit Kriener and colleagues explore in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience the dependence of pattern formation in spiking ring networks on the input current regime. The authors use the NEST technology for spike interaction in continuous time for high-precision simulations not limited by a temporal grid.
January, 2014
NEST is one of the software packages used for student projects at the 5th Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience (LASCON V) held at the Brain Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil. Sacha van Albada participates in the course as a lecturer and NEST tutor.
January, 2014
NEST is one of the software packages used for student projects at the 5th Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience (LASCON V) held at the Brain Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil. Sacha van Albada participates in the course as a lecturer and NEST tutor.
Marc-Oliver Gewaltig gives keynote lecture at the Informatik2013 conference in Koblenz, Germany.
September 18, 2013
Marc-Oliver Gewaltig gives keynote lecture at the Informatik2013 conference in Koblenz, Germany.
September 6, 2013
Moritz Helias is awarded the Helmholtz Young Investigators Group “Theory of multi-scale neuronal networks”. The group will use NEST to validate mean-field approaches by high-precision and full-scale simulations of the microscopic dynamics.
September 6, 2013
Moritz Helias is awarded the Helmholtz Young Investigators Group “Theory of multi-scale neuronal networks”. The group will use NEST to validate mean-field approaches by high-precision and full-scale simulations of the microscopic dynamics.
Markus Diesmann speaks at ISC’13, Leipzig, Germany, about “Simulation Technology for Brain-Scale Neuronal Networks”.
December 4, 2013
The Japanese “Science Channel” publishes a movie explaining the record neuronal network simulation performed on the K supercomputer using NEST (youtube version).
In an editorial of “Neuroinformatics”, Erik De Schutter comments positively on the development process of NEST and the perspectives of the Human Brain Project [3].
Moritz Helias, Tom Tetzlaff and Markus Diesmann publish an article on the structure of spike-train correlation functions in finite-size neural networks in the New Journal of Physics. By means of an analytically solvable model, the authors show, in particular, how the size of a spiking neural network can be scaled without changing its dynamical state. NEST simulations are used to demonstrate the validity of the mathematical framework.
January 28, 2013
The EU commission awards one of two EU Flagship grants to the Human Brain Project (HBP). NEST experts have already contributed to the HBP preparatory study demonstrating the feasibility of this project and in the coming 10 years are planning to advance simulation technology towards brain-scale simulations on next-generation supercomputers.
NEST Initiative releases NEST 2.2.0 under GPLv2+, a new version of NEST containing substantial improvements and many new features.
December 4th, 2012
Markus Diesmann gives a lecture on “Brain-scale neuronal network simulations on K” at the 4th Biosupercomputing Symposium in Tokyo.
December 1st, 2012
The current Bernstein newsletter with a focus on collaborations with industry partners reports in [ http://www.nncn.uni-freiburg.de/pdfs/newsletter0412en “Networking with NEST”] (page 4-5) on the long-standing relationship of the NEST Initiative with the Bernstein Network highlighting the work of Dr. Marc-Oliver Gewaltig.
October 16, 2012
NEST goes GPL”: The NEST Initiative presents itself and the NEST 2.0.0 release under the GNU General Public License at the INCF booth at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in New Orleans (afternoon; see demo abstract) and at the Computational Neuroscience Social (6:45 PM-8:45 PM at Hilton Riverside: Versailles, New Orleans).
“October 12, 2012
September 20, 2012
Deger et al. publish an article in PLoS Computational Biology describing how cooperative synapse formation and elimination explains synapse distributions in cortex. The study analyses a simplified version of the structural-plasticity model [Helias et al., 2008] implemented in NEST. Press releases are featured by the University Freiburg (english, german) and the Bernstein Center Freiburg (english, german).
Ruben Moreno-Bote and Moritz Helias hold a tutorial at CNS*12 in Decatur/Atlanta on the Theory of correlation transfer and correlation structure in recurrent networks. In the context of the tutorial, Moritz Helias explains how binary networks can be simulated with NEST. This enables verification of theoretical results on binary networks by direct simulation.
The online magazin Telepolis (Heise) publishes an interview (german) with Markus Diesmann on brain simulation, the human brain project, the future of supercomputers and communication problems between journalists and scientists.
Jenia Jitsev receives both the Best Paper Award and Best Abstract Award at this yearﾒs International Joint Conference on Neuronal Networks (IJCNN) in Brisbane. His presentations display recent findings obtained with his modeling of the basal-ganglia neural network in reward-based learning, implemented in NEST [7].
June 11-29 2012
Markus Diesmann lectures at the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2012. NEST is one of the software packages used for student projects. Moritz Deger participates as NEST tutor.
An article in systembiologie.de describes the new institute INM-6 at Jülich Research Center (in German).
January 15- February 10, 2012
Tom Tetzlaff lectures at the 4th Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience (LASCON IV) at the University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, Brazil. NEST is one of the software packages used for student projects. Tom Tetzlaff works as NEST tutor.
Activities 2011
December 12, 2011
Lindén et al. publish a manuscript on the spatial reach of the local-field potential (LFP) in the journal Neuron. In this study, NEST simulations of a cortical network model contribute realistic layer-specific synaptic input to the LFP model. Press releases (English, German) are featured by the Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) and the Research Center Jülich.
November 24-25, 2011
Jochen Martin Eppler from the NEST Initiative, Mikael Djurfeldt, creator of MUSIC and CSA, and Andrew Davison, creator of PyNN, meet in Gif sur Yvette for a hackathon to design and implement a native CSA interface for the NEST backend of PyNN and to discuss the future of the MUSIC interface for NEST.
A publication by Yamauchi, Kim and Shinomoto extends the MAT neuron model by a voltage dependence of the threshold so that the model exhibits the full range of responses to transient currents. The paper shows that the model is “essentially linear” (Morrison et al. 2008) and can efficiently be implemented using technology developed by the NEST Initiative (Morrison et al. 2007, Rotter and Diesmann 1999).
An independent publication on state of the art integration methods for spiking neuronal networks lists only NEST as a software package achieving the accuracy of the reference solution and points out the importance of handling spikes in continuous time (Henker et al. 2011 J Comput Neurosci doi:10.1007/s10827-011-0353-9). The detailed algorithm implemented in NEST has been published in Hanuschkin, Kunkel et al. 2010 Front Neuroinf 4:113. The latest version of PyNN provides an interface for enabling continuous spike interaction if provided by the simulation engine.
Several projects involving NEST are presented at the CNS 2011 in Stockholm (see [8],[9],[10]).
June 21, 2011
NEST goes climate science. Anne Chapuis and Tom Tetzlaff (Norwegian University of Life Sciences) study the dynamics of glacier calving using NEST as a simulation tool. The work is presented by Tom Tetzlaff at the Biannual Meeting of the Norwegian Physical Society 2011. In an interview published by the largest Norwegian online science journal forskning.no, Anne Chapuis and Tom Tetzlaff talk about their project (in Norwegian)”.
“June 13 – 30, 2011
June 2011
USB-stick machine making NEST sticks at Forschungszentrum Jülich.
Dr. Jochen Martin Eppler automates mass creation of NEST USB-sticks at Forschungszentrum Jülich.
NEST enabled research results were presented at a ceremony at the National Art Center Tokyo to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the treaty of friendship between Japan and Prussia organized by the German embassy. The event took place in the presence of the crown prince Naruhito of Japan, the vice foreign minister of Japan Matsumoto, and the German embassador Dr. Stanzel (more at DAAD news). As the result of a competitive selection process the study “What Japanese gardens teach us about neural dynamics” by Dr. Helias and co-workers was presented to the crown prince as one out of only two. A more detailed report on the latter work was just published in Frontiers in Neuroscience.
NEST 2.0 is demonstrated during the SfN Annual Meeting in San Diego at the booth of the INCF (see below). The demonstration will take place on Nov. 15 from 9:30 to 12:30 in booth #4025 which will be in the Non-profit area of the exhibits. The full program of demos at the INCF booth can be downloaded at [11]. In addition, there is a NEST Poster in the scientific program on Sunday, November 14 from 11:00-12:00 in Halls B-H, 208.28/MMM19 and one at the Computational Neuroscience Social on Tuesday, November 16 from 6:45 pm-8:45 pm.
November 12, 2010
A paper about the FACETS Demonstrater has been submitted to Biological Cybernetics. A citable preprint is available at arXiv.org.
November 11, 2010
The first release candidate of NEST 2.0 is available including technology described in 4 recently published papers. See the release notes.
A manuscript reporting the first neuroscientific discovery with NEST only possible with the technology to simulate spike interactions in continuous time has been published at PLoS Computational Biology. The authors observe a previously overlooked instantaneous non-linear response of the integrate-and-fire neuron. Press-releases are available on the RIKEN BSI and the RIKEN (English and Japanese) as well as on the University Freiburg (English and German), the Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience and the Bernstein Center Freiburg web site. Some resulting press coverage can be found here.
September 2 – 4 2010
NEST related poster contributions at Neuro2010 in Kobe
August 30 – September 1 2010
Poster contributions describe the current state of NEST at the INCF congress in Kobe
At the CNS*2010 conference neuroscientific results obtained with NEST will be presented in one featured oral contribution and one short oral contribution: Chris Trengove
June 14 – July 1
NEST is one of the software packages to be used for the student projects at the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2010. This year two NEST experts will serve as tutors: Wiebke Potjans (plasticity and neuromodulators) and Tobias Potjans (structured networks).
21.04.10
The Junior Professorship Programme of Baden-Wuerttemberg supports Prof. Abigail Morrison’s research on the neuronal basis of movement control. All simulations are carried out with NEST. press release
Activities 2009
October 7-9, 2009
FACETS CodeJam Workshop organized by Abigail Morrison and Bernd Wiebelt with Eilif Muller and Andrew Davison
NEST release 1.9.8401-2 contains an implementation of the award winning MAT2 neuron model by Kobayashi R, Tsubo Y, and Shinomoto S (2009) Front. Comput. Neurosci. 3:9 doi:10.3389/neuro.10.009.2009. Using this model, Dr. Kobayashi (Ritsumeikan University) won the 1st prizes for Challenges A and B of the INCF Quantitative Single-Neuron Modeling Competition 2009 awarded at the 2nd INCF Congress in Pilsen, Czech Republic.
NEST related poster contributions to the 17th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS*2008: P60, P69, P131 NEST developers, Alexander Hanuschkin and Susanne Kunkel, receive an award for one of the best poster contributions
NEST initiative participates in the workshop “Availability of published computational models for testing and attributed reuse” at the Computational Neuroscience, CNS*07 conference.
June 2007
NEST is used in the FACETS course “Modelling for beginners” in Stockholm.
June 2007
NEST technology is discussed in a tutorial on “Differential equations and numerics for large spiking neural networks” at the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course, OCNC 2007.
May 2007
Paper on ‘Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity in Balanced Random Networks’ using NEST has been published in Neural Computation 2007; 19:1437-1467 A press release can be found here.
May 2007
The NEST web-site moves to MediaWiki, the wikipedia platform.
Paper on ‘Exact Subthreshold Integration with Continuous Spike Times in Discrete-Time Neural Network Simulations’ using NEST published. Neural Computation. 2007;19:47-79
11.01.2007 – 13.01.2007
HRI participates in FACETS meeting.
January 2007
HRI introduced as an officially partner of FACETS.
Activities 2006
December 2006
Paper on “Programmable Logic Construction Kits for Hyper Real-time Neuronal Modeling” by Guerrero-Rivera R, Morrison A, Diesmann M, Pearce, TC (2006) (Neural Computation 18:2651–2679)
12.12.2006 – 13.12.2006
NEST represented at 1st INCF workshop on large-scale modeling; resulting report is consistent with many ideas developed in the course of the research on NEST operations.
2006-09-01
Pre-release of NEST 2 available with distributed computing and STDP capabilities.
