Bernstein Conference

NEST will be there

https://bernstein-conference.de/

EITN Fall School on Computational Neuroscience 2023

NEST will be there

https://eitnfallschool2023.sciencesconf.org/

CNS 2023

NEST will be there

https://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2023

NEST Conference 2023

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!

https://nest-simulator.org/conference

EBRAINS Brain Simulation School 2023

Johanna Senk gave a tutorial: Modelling networks with NEST

https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/education-training-career/education-programme/training-events/brainsim23/

Capo Caccia Cognitive Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop: 2023

Agnes Korcsak-Gorzo and Charl Linssen extende NEST by creating custom neuron models and synaptic plasticity rules using NESTML.

https://capocaccia.cc/en/event/ccnw23/landing-page/

2nd HiRSE_PS Live Meeting

NEST @ HiRSE

https://www.helmholtz-hirse.de/

Human Brain Project Summit 2023

License to Spike – A NEST Desktop and NESTML Workshop

https://summit2023.humanbrainproject.eu/

CNS*2022 Melbourne - NEST on-site tutorial

An on-site tutorial at the 31st Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting - From single-cell modeling to large-scale network dynamics with NEST Simulator

https://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2022-tutorials#T1

INCF 9th Baltic-Nordic Summer School on Neuroinformatics - NEST Workshop - networks and plasticity

Agnes Korcsak-Gorzo, Jasper Albers presented in a tutorial connection rules, activity plots and a description of Brunell-type network AI activity.

http://bionn.matinf.uj.edu.pl/events/bnni2022/

CNS*2022 - NEST online satellite tutorial

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.

https://ocns.github.io/SoftwareWG/pages/software-wg-satellite-tutorials-at-cns-2022.html

NeuroMat - Pathways to the 2023 IHP program - NEST talk - Single neuron model in cortical context

Markus Diesmann presented the possibilities of NEST in cooperation with NESTML in a lecture.

https://rpbihp.numec.prp.usp.br/index.php/Pathways_to_the_2023_IHP_thematic_program_Random_Processes_in_the_Brain

NEST Conference 2022

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!

https://nest-simulator.org/conference

EBRAINS Workshop BASSES - Hands-on Session - Simulating spatially organised networks with NEST

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.

https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/education/ebrains-workshops/basses/

NEST 3.3 is released

Spreizer, Sebastian, Mitchell, Jessica, Jordan, Jakob, Wybo, Willem, Kurth, Anno, Vennemo, Stine Brekke, Pronold, Jari, Trensch, Guido, Benelhedi, Mohamed Ayssar, Terhorst, Dennis, Eppler, Jochen Martin, Mørk, Håkon, Linssen, Charl, Senk, Johanna, Lober, Melissa, Morrison, Abigail, Graber, Steffen, Kunkel, Susanne, Gutzen, Robin, & Plesser, Hans Ekkehard. (2022). NEST 3.3 (3.2). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6368024

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6368024

NEST 3.2 is released

de Schepper, Robin, Eppler, Jochen Martin, Kurth, Anno, Nagendra Babu, Pooja, Deepu, Rajalekshmi, Spreizer, Sebastian, Trensch, Guido, Pronold, Jari, Vennemo, Stine Brekke, Graber, Steffen, Morales-Gregorio, Aitor, Linssen, Charl, Benelhedi, Mohamed Ayssar, Mørk, Håkon, Morrison, Abigail, Terhorst, Dennis, Mitchell, Jessica, Diaz, Sandra, Kitayama, Itaru, … Plesser, Hans Ekkehard. (2022). NEST 3.2 (3.2). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5886894

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5886894

NEST Hackathon

Christmas hackathon

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/NEST-Hackathon--6.12.%E2%80%9310.12-2021

NEST Hackathon

Test suite refactoring.

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/NEST-Hackathon-26-10-2021

NEST 3.1 is released

Deepu, Rajalekshmi, Spreizer, Sebastian, Trensch, Guido, Terhorst, Dennis, Vennemo, Stine Brekke, Mitchell, Jessica, Linssen, Charl, Mørk, Håkon, Morrison, Abigail, Eppler, Jochen Martin, Kamiji, Nilton Liuji, de Schepper, Robin, Kitayama, Itaru, Kurth, Anno, Morales-Gregorio, Aitor, Nagendra Babu, Pooja, & Plesser, Hans Ekkehard. (2021). NEST 3.1 (3.1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5508805

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5508805

NEST Hackathon

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/NEST-Hackathon-30.08-03.09-2021

CNS*2021 Online: Tutorials

Tutorial by Charl Linssen (JARA-Institute, Jülich, Germany), Barna Zajzon, Sebastian Spreizer (University of Trier, Germany), Jasper Albers, and Dennis Terhorst

https://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2021-tutorials#T4

NEST Hackathon

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/NEST-Hackathon-30.06-02.07-2021

NEST Conference 2021: A Virtual Forum for Users and Developers

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.

https://nest-simulator.org/conference

NEST 3.0 is released

Hahne, Jan, Diaz, Sandra, Patronis, Alexander, Schenck, Wolfram, Peyser, Alexander, Graber, Steffen, Spreizer, Sebastian, Vennemo, Stine Brekke, Ippen, Tammo, Mørk, Håkon, Jordan, Jakob, Senk, Johanna, Konradi, Sara, Weidel, Philipp, Fardet, Tanguy, Dahmen, David, Terhorst, Dennis, Stapmanns, Jonas, Trensch, Guido, … Plesser, Hans Ekkehard. (2021). NEST 3.0 (3.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4739103

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4739103

NEST Finalton

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/NEST-Finalton-08.06.2020

NEST Hackathon

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/NEST-Hackathon-19.04-23.04-2021

NEST Hackathon

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/NEST-Hackathon-01.02-05.02-2021

SfN Global Connectome

Dennis Terhorst explains NESTML, NEST Desktop, NEST Simulator and many more.

https://www.sfn.org/meetings/virtual-events/sfn-global-connectome-a-virtual-event/

NEST Hackathon

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/NEST-Hackathon-09.11---13.11-2020

Bernstein Conference 2020

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

https://www.bernstein-network.de/de/bernstein-conference/2020/bernstein-conference-2020

NEST Hackathon

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/NEST-Hackathon-14.09-18.09-2020

Workshop: New interfaces for teaching with NEST: hands-on with the NEST Desktop GUI and NESTML code generation

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.

https://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2020-workshops
https://clinssen.github.io/OCNS-2020-workshop/index.html

NEST Hackathon

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/NEST-Hackathon-01.07---03.07-2020

NEST Conference 2020: A Virtual Forum for Users and Developers

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

https://nest-simulator.org/nestcon2020.html

Course: OCNC 2020, Okinawa, Japan - Canceled due to COVID-19

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.

https://groups.oist.jp/ocnc

New paper using Nest: Efficient Communication in Distributed Simulations of Spiking Neuronal Networks With Gap Junctions

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.

https://doi.org/10.3389/fninf.2020.00012

International Symposium: New Horizons of Computational Science 2020

Markus Diesmann talks about "Brain models as research platforms on heterogeneous computer architectures".

https://hetero-manycore.riken.jp/symposium2020/

Interview: Markus Diesmann in conversation with Laborjournal

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.

https://www.laborjournal.de/rubric/hintergrund/hg/hg_20_01_03.php

New press release: Rauschende Chips: Wie neuromorphe Hardware von Erkenntnissen aus der Hirnforschung profitieren kann

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.

https://www.fz-juelich.de/portal/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2020/2020-02-03-tetzlaff/_node.html

NEST 2.20.0 released

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/).

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/releases/tag/v2.20.0

Hackathon CEREBELLUM MODELLING - NEST Tutorial

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'.

https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/education/participatecollaborate/infrastructure-events-trainings/hackathon-on-cerebellum-modelling/

Conference: LASCON 2020 in São Paulo, Brazil

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.

http://sisne.org/lascon-viii/program/?lang=en

New paper using Nest: Deterministic networks for probabilistic computing

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.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-54137-7

Workshop: NSG and HPAC - Large Scale Simulations and Data Processing

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.

https://neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nsg2019/nsg2019.html

New press release: Supercomputer simulates 77,000 neurons in the brain in real-time

Colleaguges at Manchester achieved real-time simulation of a microciruit model (Potjans, Diesmann (2014)). The work is described in (Rhodes et.al. (2019)) now highlighted in New Scientists. This is following up earlier validation and benchmarking with NEST (van Albada et. al. (2018)).

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2218993-supercomputer-simulates-77000-neurons-in-the-brain-in-real-time/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=dailynewsletter&utm_campaign=09102019

At the Bernstein Conference 2019

NEST was showcased at the Human Brain Projects (HBP) Booth, and nearby, the Bernstein Coordination Site (BCOS) presented the latest events and plans of the Bernstein Network.

http://bernstein-conference.de/

Workshop: Brain Circuit Insight: From brain circuit models to brain circuit insights, Bernstein Conference 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'

http://bernstein-conference.de/

Markus Diesmann, creator of NEST, accepted as a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz (Germany)

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.

http://www.adwmainz.de/nachrichten/artikel/sechs-neue-mitglieder-in-der-akademie-der-wissenschaften-und-der-literatur-1.html

New press release: Hidden Dynamics Detected in Neuronal Networks

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.

https://www.fz-juelich.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/UK/EN/2019/notifications/2019-07-12-hidden-dynamics.html

New Paper using NEST: Propagation of orientation selectivity in a spiking network model of layered primary visual cortex

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

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007080

CNS 2019 - Talk: Towards Reproducible Generation and De-scription of Network Connectivity

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.

https://www.cnsorg.org/assets/CNS_Meetings/CNS2019/CNS%2A2019ProgramBook.pdf

CNS 2019 - Talk: Open Cortical Multi-Area Model at Cellular Resolution

'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.

https://www.cnsorg.org/assets/CNS_Meetings/CNS2019/CNS%2A2019ProgramBook.pdf

CNS 2019 - NEST tutorial

Alexander van Meegen and Dennis Terhorst give an 'Introduction to the simulation of structurally detailed large-scale neuronal networks (using NEST).'

https://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2019-tutorials#T1

3rd HBP Curriculum Workshop Series - ICT for non-specialists

Susanne Kunkel tells participants how to get started with NEST.

https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/education/participatecollaborate/curriculum/workshops/3rd-curriculum-workshop-ict-hpc/

New press release: The beneficial effects of sleep in a cerebral simulation

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.

https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/follow-hbp/news/the-beneficial-effects-of-sleep-in-a-cerebral-simulation/

New release: NEST 2.18.0

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.

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/releases

NEST Hackathon

NEST 2.18.0 RELEASE

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/NEST-Hackathon-26.06---28.06-2019

NEST Conference 2019 - A Forum for Users and Developers

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.

https://indico-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/92/

ISC 2019

Markus Diesmann. Susanne Kunkel, Steve Furber and Mihai Petrovici explained 'Computational Neuroscience and Neuromorphic Computing: Foundations of Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence'

https://www.isc-hpc.com/

New press release: The Scientific Case for Brain Simulations

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.

https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/follow-hbp/news/the-scientific-case-for-brain-simulations/

NEST Hackathon

https://nest-simulator.org/

New publication: The Scientific Case for Brain Simulations

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.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.03.027

NEST Hackathon

https://nest-simulator.org/

NEST Hackathon

https://nest-simulator.org/

Celebrate SpiNNaker 1 million

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.

http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/bmh/about-fbmh/news-and-events/news/display/?id=20928

EITN workshop - Are we building the right user-level documentation?

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.

https://eitnconf-211118.sciencesconf.org/

NEST simulator on twitter

NEST has entered the world of social media and now has a twitter account.

https://twitter.com/NestSimulator

Youtube video 'Multi-scale spiking network model of macaque visual cortex'

This video describes the first steps with the "Multi-scale spiking network model of macaque visual cortex". More info - https://inm-6.github.io/multi-area-model/

https://youtu.be/YsH3BcyZBcU

NEST simulator is now on youtube

Videos explaining NEST.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU3ybThs-6xW8Cd4KtI_BEA

HBP Colloquium at Forschungszentrum Jülich

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.

http://www.fz-juelich.de/conferences/HBP-Juelich-Colloquium/EN/Home/home_node.html

Markus Diesmann at 'kulturradio RBB'

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.

https://www.kulturradio.de/programm/schema/sendungen/kulturradio_am_vormittag/archiv/20180928_0905/wissen_0910.html

NIKT - Norwegian Informatics Conference 2018

At this year's events 3 NEST posters will be presented.

http://nikt2018.ifi.uio.no/index_en.html

CNS*2018 Workshop

Markus Diesmann held a tutorial called "Reusable publication of a cortical multi-area model at cellular resolution" at Workshop "Integrative Theories of Cortical Function"

http://www.nvri.org.au/events.php/40/cns2018-workshop-integrative-theories-of-cortical-function

CNS*2018 Workshop

Sacha van Albada led a workshop about „Large scale model development from the NEST perspective“

http://www.opensourcebrain.org/docs/Help/Meetings#CNS_2018

CNS*2018 Tutorial

Sacha van Albada and Philipp Weidel teached a tutorial on „Simulation of large-scale neural networks (using NEST)“

https://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2018-tutorials#T3

OCNC - OIST Computational Neuroscience Course

NEST technology is discussed in a tutorial by Espen hagen.

https://groups.oist.jp/ocnc/program-ocnc2018

The PASC18 Conference

Susanne Kunkel presented a poster about "Neuronal Network Simulation Code for the Exascale Era"

https://pasc18.pasc-conference.org/

NEST Hackathon 2018 II

Solutions to issues and new ideas flourished during a very productive Hackathon following the NEST conference.

https://indico-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/71/

NEST conference 2018

The NEST conference was a huge success. Many fantastic talks and interesting discussions took place regarding scientific and technical developments for the NEST simulator.

https://indico-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/71/

NEST Hackathon Ås 2018

Hans Ekkehard Plesser organized a NEST Hackathon.

None

Ready for Exascale: researchers find algorithm for large-scale brain simulations on next-generation supercomputers

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

Press release: Ready for Exascale: researchers find algorithm for large-scale brain simulations on next-generation supercomputers

VII Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience – LASCON’18

Sacha van Albada lectures about single-neuron and neural network models and Maximilian Schmidt provides NEST tutorials.

http://sisne.org/lascon-intro/?lang=en

NEST CONFERENCE 2017

Random Structures on the Brain

Markus Diesmann presented 'Aspects of the multi-scale hierarchical organization of macaque visual cortex' and simulations with NEST.

https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/lc/web/2017/933/info.php3?wsid=933

Aspects of Neuroscience

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

http://neuroaspects.org/nest-tutorialnestml-tutorial

Workshop "Macht uns die Digitalisierung zum Supermenschen?"

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?'

http://www.lilienberg.ch/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/macht-uns-die-digitalisierung-zum-supermenschen--124.html

SfN Satellite Workshop - High Performance Computing (HPC) Resources for Parallel Simulations and Data Analysis: NSG and HPAC

There was a talk about 'NEST, brain building blocks integrated with theory' by Markus Diesmann

http://www.nsgportal.org/SFN2017_workshop.html

HBP Summit 2017

Dennis Terhorst gave an inside into 'NEST - The Neural Simulation Tool'

https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/follow-hbp/news/5th-annual-human-brain-project-summit/

NeuroMat Workshop 2017 - “Random Structures in the Brain”

Markus Diesmann talked about the 'NeuroMat challenges in high-performance computing and stochastic modeling' with NEST.

http://neuromat.numec.prp.usp.br/rsbrain

Bernstein Conference

Workshop on "Connectivity generation, exploration and visualization for large scale neural networks" - Wouter Klijn, Sandra Diaz

http://www.nncn.de/en/bernstein-conference/2017/satellite-workshops/connectivity-generation-exploration-and-visualization-for-large-scale-neural-networks-klijn-diaz

Young Researchers Event 2017

Dennis Terhorst gave a tutorial to provide a kick-start into neural network simulations using the NEST simulator and NESTML

https://education.humanbrainproject.eu/web/young-researchers-event-2017

CNS*2017 III

Tobias Kühn presented NEST simulations in his talk 'Temporal structure of synchrony and Unitary Events in periodically-driven balanced networks'

http://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2017

CNS*2017 II

Alexander Peyser give a talk about "Towards exascale computing in neuroscience: NEST, NestMC and TVB".

http://www.nsgportal.org/NSGWorkshop-OCNS-2017.html

CNS*2017 I

Sacha van Albada and Jonas Stapmanns give a full-day tutorial about the simulation of large-scale neural networks with NEST.

http://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2017-tutorials#t3

ICT for non-specialists

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.

https://education.humanbrainproject.eu/web/1st-hbp-curriculum-ict

Workshop "Brain Dynamics on Multiple Scales"

Markus Diesmann talked about 'The multi-scale structure and dynamics of macaque visual cortex at cellular and synaptic resolution' and the simulation with NEST.

https://www.dresden-science-calendar.de/calendar/en/event/10128

Release of NEST 2.12.0

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

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/releases/tag/v2.12.0

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

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'.

https://education.humanbrainproject.eu/web/studentconference/

Code Generation from Model Description Languages II

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.

https://indico-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/25/

1st NeuroMat Course on Parallel and GPU Programming for Neuroscience

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".

https://www.facebook.com/neuromathematics/

NEST User Workshop 2016

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.

Registration for the Workshop is now open at

https://indico-jsc.fz-juelich.de/e/nest2016

Simulation of Biological Neuronal Networks

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

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

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"

http://www.nncn.de/en/bernstein-conference/2016/satellite-workshops/high-performance-computing-in-neuroscience-peyser-wachtler

12th International Neural Coding Workshop

NEST ist ready for use by neuroscience was one conclusions in Markus Diensmanns talk.

MONA2 – Modelling Neural Activity

Markus Diesmann talks about the „Progress and challenges in bottom-up network modeling“.

OCNC Tutorial 2016

Espen Hagen explains „Modeling networks of spiking neurons using NEST (v2.10.0)“.

PASC16 Conference, MS28 Level of Detail in Brain Modeling

Markus Diesmann talks about the „Technology for Brain Scale Simulation at Cellular Resolution“

Defense of doctoral thesis

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

Makus Diesmann participate in a round table on “Big science: the case for neuroscience”
and give a talk about NEST.

neuromat.numec.prp.usp.br/hpcneuro

HBP Young Researchers Event Budapest

Philipp Weidel gives a tutorial about NEST.

http://www.nncn.de/en/news/events/young-researchers

Programme (pdf):
http://www.nncn.de/pdfs/hbp-young-researchers-event-in-budapest

Human Brain Project Platform Release

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 platforms SP6, SP7 and SP10.

https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/platform-release

NEST-SpiNNaker-Elephant Demo on HBP Platform

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.

https://collab.humanbrainproject.eu/#/collab/507/nav/4480

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

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.

The simulation code is a PyNN ( http://neuralensemble.org/PyNN/ ) implementation based on a public version with NEST ( https://nest-simulator.org/ ) as simulator backend.

https://collab.humanbrainproject.eu/#/collab/569/nav/5287

Workshop “Brain Manifesto 2.0”

At Schloss Beuggen Markus Diesman explains the role ofe nest for „Multi-area models at cellular resolution “.

Frühjahrstagung der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft

Thomas Kühn presented „Correlations in binary networks with oscillating input“. All simulations where done with NEST.

Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience

„Simulations of macaque cortical networks at cellular and synaptic resolution“ with NEST explained by Markus Diesmann.

6th AICS International Symposium

Markus Diesmann talks about “Collaborations between AICS and JSC”.

http://www.aics.riken.jp/AICS-Symposium/2016/

SFB 936 „Multi-Site Communication in the Brain“

NEST explained by Markus Diesmann in his talk „Brain-scale simulations of cortical networks at cellular and synaptic resolution“

LASCON 2016: VI Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience

January 3-29, 2016, Sao Paulo, Brazil
http://sisne.org/?page_id=34&lang=en

Release of NEST 2.10.0

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

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/releases/tag/v2.10.0

NESTML Community Workshop

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.

More information.

Register here.

Workshop “Connecting Network Architecture and Network Computation”

Markus Diesmann lectured on brain-scale simulations.
Video: http://www.birs.ca/events/2015/5-day-workshops/15w5158/videos/watch/201512070904-Diesmann.html

http://www.birs.ca/events/2015/5-day-workshops/15w5158

NEST live media image with NEST 2.8.0 is available

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.

Download and a short introduction on our website:

https://nest-simulator.org/download/#livemedia

Article: “Stoßverkehr im Gehirn”

“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

Michale Denker explained how working in integrative loops unlocks the potential of the HBP approach.

Using the Neuroscience Gateway Portal for Parallel Simulations

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

http://www.nsgportal.org/workshop.html

Workshop “Challenges in Linking Statistical and Mathematical Neuroscience”

Markus Diesmann talks about the “Role of biophysical modeling”.

HBP Summit 2015: NEST + Elephant: An integrated simulation-analysis workflow

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

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

https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/releases/tag/v2.8.0

IMPORTANT: some of the defaults in NEST changed. You might have to
adapt your scripts accordingly. See the release notes for details.

Bernstein Conference workshop Replicability and reproducibility of neural network simulation

Susanne Kunkel talks about “Replicable simulations with NEST”.

http://www.nncn.de/de/bernstein-conference/2015/satellite-workshops/replicability-and-reproducibility-of-neural-network-simula-tions

Bernstein Conference 2015: Workshop

Workshop: Replicability and reproducibility of neural network simulations
David Dahmen, Hans Ekkehard Plesser, Susanne Kunkel
http://www.nncn.de/de/bernstein-conference/2015/satellite-workshops/resolveuid/de8df85976ed4e518295440fa1a9a45c

NEST as an exascale application

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

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.

The press release „Problematic Relationship: Small Models of the Brain Distort Contact Intensity Between Neurons“ describes the  need for full scale simulations and the role of NEST.

CCNS Opening Workshop, SAMSI

Markus Diesmann talks about “Brain-scale simulations at cellular and synaptic resolution: necessity and feasibility“

2nd Human Brain Project School – Future Computing

2nd Human Brain Project School – Future Computing -3rd to 9th August in Obergurgl, Austria.

Tom Tetzlaff gives two talks: “Intro neuron models” and “Simulation and numerics of neuron models“.
Markus Diesmann gives a lecture about the “Simulation of networks”.
Johanna Senk gives a tutorial about “Simulating large-scale spiking neuronal networks with NEST“.

CNS Workshop Supercomputational Neuroscience – tools and applications

Susanne Kunkel Talks about “Meeting the memory challenges of brain-scale network simulation “.

CNS 2015: NEST Tutorials and Workshops

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

T2: Modeling and analysis of extracellular potentials
Gaute Einevoll, Szymon Łęski, Espen Hagen
http://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2015-tutorials#t2

Workshop: High-performance computing in neuroscience – from physiologically realistic neurons to full-scale brain models
Wolfram Schenck, Alex Peyser
http://www.fz-juelich.de/ias/jsc/EN/Expertise/SimLab/slns/news_events/2015/HPCN_workshop_CNS2015/_node.html

BrainComp 2015 – International Workshop on Brain-Inspired Computing

Markus Diesmann talks about “Necessity and feasibility of brain-scale simulations or: My brain is finite”

Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2015

NEST is one of the software packages used for the student projects at the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2015. Sacha van Albada participates as a tutor.

HPC for Life Science Conference

Susanne Kunkel talks about “Specifying supercomputers for brain-scale neuronal network simulations ”

https://starcite.smarteventscloud.com/eps/event/microsite/previewinvitation.asp?pagetype=CUSTOMPAGE&CustomPageid=/1323164

CINPLA Workshop “Inferring network activity from LFPs”

Markus Diesmann talks about “Multi-area multi-layer spiking network models as a platform for LFP research “

NEST goes GitHub

The migration of the NEST source code to GitHub is done!
For an easy start see:
NEST Initiative
If you want to develop in NEST:
nest::Developer Space

NEST on GitHub:
https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator

Workshop “Unraveling Mesoscopic Coding Principles Using Ultra-High Magnetic Field MRI and Neural Network Modelling”

Markus Diesmann talks about “Simulation of brain-scale neuronal networks at cellular and synaptic resolution “

First NEST User Workshop

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.

Torino–Juelich Workshop “Computational Neurosciences”

Markus Diesmann talks about “Simulation of brain-scale neuronal networks at cellular and synaptic resolution “

Seminar “CONNECT-Cologne Neural Network Collaboration”

Markus Diesmann talks about “Simulation of brain-scale neuronal networks at cellular and synaptic resolution”

EITN HBP workshop “SP4/SP9 Workshop / Theory – Neuromorphic”

Markus Diesmann talks about “A multi-area model at the resolution of neurons and synapses “

NineML meeting in Gif-sur-Yvette

Jochen M. Eppler participates in the NineML Standardization Committee meeting in Gif-sur-Yvette

FACETS-ITN Course Experiments with Large Scale Hardware Systems

Susanne Kunkel talks about “Memory usage in high-performance computing”.

BCCN Conference Dynamics of Neuronal Systems

Susanne Kunkel talks about “NEST: A highly scalable tool for simulations of spiking neuronal networks with synaptic plasticity ”

https://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/bccn/bccn-conference-program

1st community workshop HBP network simulator

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

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

Susanne Kunkel talks about  “Supercomputer simulations of spiking neuronal networks”.

Workshop on “Media for Simulating the Brain”

Markus Diesmann talks about “Computational neuroscience emerging from the dark ages”.

December 23

NEST 2.6.0 has been released as open source implementing the technology described in the article “Spiking network simulation code for petascale computers” by Susanne Kunkel et al. (doi:10.3389/fninf.2014.00078). NEST is the technological basis of the network simulator of the HBP. The article demonstrates that neuroscience can make full use of petascale supercomputers.

December 9, 2014

Markus Diesmann talks about “Simulation of brain-scale neuronal networks at cellular and synaptic resolution” at the 4th HPC-Status Conference of the Gauß-Allianz, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany

December 8 – 19, 2014

Abigail Morrison offers the course “Simulation of Biological Neuronal Networks” in Freiburg. The course consists of lectures, practical exercises in NEST and a project. The event is a cooperation between the Bernstein Center Freiburg and the Simulation Lab Neuroscience at the Forschungszentrum Jülich.

December 8, 2014

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

November 26 2014

Sacha van Albada gave an overview about NEST HPC status – technology and theory, BrainScaleS Demo 1, 2 and 3 workshop, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

November 4 2014

Markus Diesmann talks about “Simulation of brain-scale neuronal networks at cellular and synaptic resolution”, Maison de la Simulation, CEA, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

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.

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.

October 2 2014

Markus Diesmann talks about network simulation code for the peta scale” at the 4th Frontiers in Neuromorphic Computing Conference, BrainScaleS, Heidelberg, Germany

September 26 2014

Markus Diesmann talks about Simulation of brain-scale neuronal networks at cellular and synaptic resolution at the NeuroVisionen 10, Juelich, Germany

September 12 2014

Jochen Martin Eppler participated in and gave an invited talk about the motivations for code generation in NEST and prior work in this field at the INCF Workshop on Code Generation from Model Description Languages, Paris, France

September 8 – 14 2014

1st Human Brain Project School, Alpbach, Austria:
Markus Diesmann gives a lecture about “Simulation of brain-scale neuronal networks at cellular and synaptic resolution“.
Johanna Senk gives a tutorial about “Simulating large-scale spiking neuronal networks with NEST“.

August 3-30, 2014

NEST is one of the software packages used for the student projects at the Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience 2014 in Frankfurt, Germany. Sarah Jarvis participates as a tutor.

August 3-30, 2014

NEST is one of the software packages used for the student projects at the Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience 2014 in Frankfurt, Germany. Sarah Jarvis participates as a tutor.

August 2014

Markus Diesmann talks about “The K computer as an instrument to study brain-scale neuronal networks at microscopic resolution” at the SS-ken HPC Forum “Bridge to Exa”, Tokyo, Japan

June 24, 2014

Markus Diesmann speaks at ISC’14, Leipzig, Germany, about “The Network Simulator of the HBP ﾖ NEST”.

June 24, 2014

Markus Diesmann speaks at ISC’14, Leipzig, Germany, about “The Network Simulator of the HBP ﾖ NEST”.

June 16 – July 3, 2014

NEST is one of the software packages used for the student projects at the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2014. Janne Moren participates as a tutor.

June 16 – July 3, 2014

NEST is one of the software packages used for the student projects at the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2014. Janne Moren participates as a tutor.

June 4-5 2014

Sacha van Albada talks about NEST for large-scale simulations of physiology-based spiking networks, “Bernstein Network – Simulation Lab Neuroscience” HPC Workshop, Jülich, Germany

May 14 – 16 2014

Markus Diesmann talks about A full-scale spiking model of the local cortical network, OSB Workshop 2014: Building and sharing models of the corte, Alghero, Sardinia, Italy

March 18, 2014

Moritz Helias talks about “NEST, simulation technology for brain-scale networks at cellular and synaptic resolution” at the annual SOS conference, held in St. Moritz, Switzerland. The talk discusses the improvements of the 4th generation simulation kernel that make it suitable for today’s peta-scale machines.

March 18, 2014

Moritz Helias talks about “NEST, simulation technology for brain-scale networks at cellular and synaptic resolution” at the annual SOS conference, held in St. Moritz, Switzerland. The talk discusses the improvements of the 4th generation simulation kernel that make it suitable for today’s peta-scale machines.

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 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.

August 2, 2013

Members of the NEST initiative and colleagues from Japan and Germany run the largest neuronal network simulation to date using NEST on the Japanese supercomputer K. See press releases [1], [2], and further articles: The Asahi Shimbun (japanese version), QUARTZ, Handelsblatt, FAZ, Wikipedia: K computer (german), TOP500, c’t magazin (german). In response to the press releases, the access statistics of the wikipedia entry on NEST exhibits a prominent peak (screen shot).

August 24, 2013

Marc-Oliver Gewaltig speaks at the INCF Short Course in Neuroinformatics prior to the INCF Conference in Stockholm.

August 24, 2013

Marc-Oliver Gewaltig speaks at the INCF Short Course in Neuroinformatics prior to the INCF Conference in Stockholm.

September 18, 2013

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.

September 10, 2013

The article Grytskyy D, Tetzlaff T, Diesmann M, and Helias M (2013), A unified view on weakly correlated recurrent networks, Front Comput Neurosci 7:131 describes the NEST implementation of binary neurons and Hawkes neurons.

June 19th

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).

October 28, 2013

Marc-Oliver Gewaltig gives a talk at the Georges Giralt Symposium in Toulouse, France.

October 24, 2013

Markus Diesmann gives a tutorial on NEST at the workshop “Analysis of electrophysiological signals: Theoretical and practical approaches” in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, October 23-25, 2013.

July 28 – August 24, 2013

NEST is one of the software packages used for the student projects at the Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience 2013 in B?dlewo, Poland. Sacha van Albada participates as a tutor.

July 13-18, 2013

The NEST Inititive holds a tutorial on “Developing neuron and synapse models for NEST” (Abigail Morrison, Jochen Eppler) at CNS*13 in Paris and gives a demonstration of the visualization of simulated brain activity by virtual reality methods (Christian Nowke and Jochen Eppler). In addition, members of the NEST Initiative are actively participating with a tutorial on the “Theory of correlation transfer and correlation structure in recurrent networks” (Moritz Helias) and several poster contributions.

June 17 – July 4, 2013

NEST is one of the software packages used for the student projects at the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2013. Pierre Yger participates as a tutor.

March 19, 2013

The article Helias M., Tetzlaff T. & Diesmann M., Echoes in correlated neural systems, New Journal of Physics 15(2):023002 (see February 1, 2013) has been selected for inclusion in IOPselect, a special collection of journal articles with “Substantial advances or significant breakthroughs”, “A high degree of novelty” and “Significant impact on future research”.

March 18 ﾖ 20, 2013

Members of the NEST Inititative present neuroscientific work produced with NEST as well as NEST technology at the BCCN Freiburg Conference “Dynamics of neuronal systems”.

March 14, 2013

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].

March 13-16, 2013

Members of the NEST Inititative present neuroscientific work produced with NEST as well as NEST technology at the 10th G�ttingen Meeting of the German Neuroscience Society (NWG). See [4] for the full program.

March 4th, 2013

Abigail Morrison and Markus Diesmann contribute talks at COSYNE 2013 to the workshop “Large-scale neuronal simulations – science, languages and platforms” on “Relating structure and activity in a full-scale local cortical network model” (MD) and “Scaling up neuronal simulations with NEST” (AM).

March 3rd, 2013

Markus Diesmann describes the history of the co-development of NEST for the K supercomputer in Kobe in volume 8 of the Bio Supercomputing Newsletter.

February 1, 2013

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.

January 28, 2013

Gewaltig & Diesmann (2007), NEST (NEural Simulation Tool), Scholarpedia, 2(4):1430 is the top-cited Scholarpedia article (186 citations).

January 14-15, 2013

The newly established Simulation Laboratory Neuroscience (SLNS) at the Research Center J�lich is introduced to the scientific community (see [5]).

10.09.13

The article Grytskyy D, Tetzlaff T, Diesmann M, and Helias M (2013), A unified view on weakly correlated recurrent networks, Front Comput Neurosci 7:131 describes the NEST implementation of binary neurons and Hawkes neurons.

18.09.13

Marc-Oliver Gewaltig gives keynote lecture at the INCF Short Course in Neuroinformatics prior to the INCF Conference in Stockholm.

02.08.13

Members of the NEST initiative and colleagues from Japan and Germany run the largest neuronal network simulation to date using NEST on the Japanese supercomputer K. See press releases [1], [2], and further articles: The Asahi Shimbun (japanese version), QUARTZ, Handelsblatt, FAZ, Wikipedia: K computer (german), TOP500, c’t magazin (german). In response to the press releases, the access statistics of the wikipedia entry on NEST exhibits a prominent peak (screen shot).

August 2, 2013

Members of the NEST initiative and colleagues from Japan and Germany run the largest neuronal network simulation to date using NEST on the Japanese supercomputer K. See press releases [1], [2], and further articles: The Asahi Shimbun (japanese version), QUARTZ, Handelsblatt, FAZ, Wikipedia: K computer (german), TOP500, c’t magazin (german). In response to the press releases, the access statistics of the wikipedia entry on NEST exhibits a prominent peak (screen shot).

December 27, 2012

Rembrandt Bakker, Thomas Wachtler and Markus Diesmann publish a perspectives article on “CoCoMac 2.0 and the future of tract-tracing databases” in Frontiers in Neuroinformatics.

December 21, 2012

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).

September 7, 2012

Marc-Oliver Gewaltig held a tutorial on “Workflows for Modeling and Simulation” at the INCF Short Course in Neuroinformatics in Munich

“August 2, 2012

July 21, 2012

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.

July 11, 2012

Bernstein TV (Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience) launches two NEST movies “NEST::documented” and “NEST – A brain simulator” (german versions: “NEST::documented”, “NEST – Ein Hirnsimulator).

July 8, 2012

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.

July 30-August 24, 2012

NEST is one of the software packages used for student projects at the Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience 2012 in B?dlewo, Poland. NEST expert Birgit Kriener participates as a tutor.

June 23, 2012

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.

February, 2012

The paper by Lind�n et al. (2011) is commented on in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and evaluated as a “Must Read” [8] in Faculty-of-1000 Biology.

January 17, 2012

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.

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.

October 2011

The web site of the Next-Generation Integrated Simulation of Living Matter (ISLIM) project links to NEST as one of the official simulation codes. Because of its performance NEST was selected a first runner on the K supercomputer.

October 27-28, 2011

Manchester-Jülich – EU BrainScaleS and IAS Workshop “What can Neuromorphic Computing and HPC learn from each other?” at the Research Center Jülich

October 4th, 2011

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).

September 19 – 30, 2011

NEST is the simulator used for practical activities at Simulation of Biological Neural Networks course at Bernstein Center Freiburg taught by NEST expert Prof. Abigail Morrison.

August 12, 2011

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.

August 1 – 26, 2011

NEST is one of the software packages used for the student projects at the 16th Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience. This year NEST expert Moritz Deger will serve as a tutor.

July 23 – 28, 2011

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

Dr. Jochen Martin Eppler automates mass creation of NEST USB-sticks at Forschungszentrum Jülich.

June 9th, 2011

The front page of Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) features the interview with Marcus Diesmann “Von Tokio nach Jülich: Prof. Markus Diesmann simuliert mit mathematischen Modellen Hirnaktivität” (“From Tokyo to Jülich: Prof. Markus Diesmann simulates brain activity with mathematical models,” in German).

May – September, 2011

NEST is a participating project in this year’s Google Summer of Code to deploy Continuous Integration infrastructure improving on the existing development practices (implemented by Yury V. Zaytsev and mentored by Prof. Abigail Morrison).

Spring Semester 2011

Large-Scale Neural Modeling class at Stanford University given by Dr. Kwabena Boahen and assisted by Peiran Gao used NEST for modeling exercises.

March 17th, 2011

The front page of Frontiers features the invited focused review by Helias et al. on “Finite post synaptic potentials cause a fast neuronal” response”.

“February 7th, 2011

January 24, 2011

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.

January 2011

An article about visualization of simulation results on JUGENE supercomputer in Jülich: “Visualizing Spiking Neurons in Virtual Reality”.

November 14-15, 2010

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.

November 3, 2010

The manuscript “PyNN: a common interface for neuronal network simulators” has made it into the top 25 of most cited Frontiers articles since its original publishing date back in January 2009.

November 3, 2010

The manuscript “PyNEST: a convenient interface to the NEST simulator” has made it into the top 25 of most cited Frontiers articles since its original publishing date back in January 2009.

September 9, 2010

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

August 2 – 27 2010

NEST is one of the software packages used for the student projects at the 15th Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience

July 24 – 30 2010

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

October 7-9, 2009

FACETS CodeJam Workshop organized by Abigail Morrison and Bernd Wiebelt with Eilif Muller and Andrew Davison

September 6 – 8, 2009

Dr. Markus Diesmann is an invited speaker at the workshop “High performance computing and grid infrastructure for neuroinformatics applications” at the 2nd INCF Congress of Neuroinformatics
Tutoring by Moritz Helias

August 3 – 28, 2009

NEST is one of the software packages to be used for the student projects at the 14th Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience

July 22 – 23, 2009

Jochen Martin Eppler presents the NEST-Python integration in a workshop on “Python in Neuroscience” at the 18th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS*2009

July 18, 2009

“Large-Scale Neuronal Network Models: Principles and Practice,” a Bernstein-Tutorial at the CNS*2009 meeting by Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser

June 18, 2009

Dr. Marc-Oliver Gewaltig gives a NEST tutorial at the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2009

June 15 – July 2, 2009

NEST is one of the software packages to be used for the student projects at the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2009
Tutoring by Birgit Kriener

May 25 – 28, 2009

Dr. Marc-Oliver Gewaltig is an invited speaker at the 3rd Workshop on Detailed Modelling and Simulation of Signal Processing in Neurons

March 27 – 28, 2009

NEST related poster contributions to the 8th Göttingen Meeting of the German Neuroscience Society: T25-10A, T26-2B, -5B, -6B, -7B, -13B, -1C, -3C, -4C, -7C

March 19 – 21, 2009

Members of the NEST Initiative actively particpate in the INCF activity on Standards and Guidelines for Large-Scale Modeling
1st meeting of the task force held in Tokyo, Japan

March 17, 2009

Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser gives an invited talk on “Simulating Layered Neuronal Networks with PyNEST” at the University of Tsukuba, Japan

June 19, 2009

“Simulating large neural networks with the Neural Simulation Tool NEST”, a lecture by Dr. Marc-Oliver Gewaltig at the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2008

16.11.09

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.

November 15 – 19, 2008

NEST poster and demo at the INCF booth at the 38th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience
Some conference contributions using the NEST simulator: 16.1, 326.16/C7, 220.1, 694.1/UU62

September 7 – 9, 2008

Live demonstration of NEST at the 1st INCF Congress of Neuroinformatics
NEST related poster contributions: 14, 46, 83, 87

August 4 – 29, 2008

NEST is one of the software packages to be used for the student projects at the 13th Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience
Tutoring by Moritz Helias

July 19 – 24, 2008

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

June 16 – July 3, 2008

NEST is one of the software packages to be used for the student projects at the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2008
Tutoring by Birgit Kriener and Tom Tetzlaff

05.08.08

NEST tutorial by Dr. Marc-Oliver Gewaltig at the 13th Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience

December 2007

NEST Poster at the INCF booth at the Society for Neuroscience Meeting 2007 in San Diego.

2007-08-01

NEST tutorial at the FIAS Neuroschool 2007 NEST is one of the software packages to be used for the student projects.

2007-08-01

NEST tutorial at the EU Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience in Arcachon, France. NEST is one of the software packages to be used for the student projects.

July 2007

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.

2007-04-01

NEST is discussed in a review on simulators, accepted for publication in JCNS.

2007-04-01

Milestones and bug-tracking moves to trac platform http://trac.edgewall.org/.

2007-04-01

Discussion on meta-simulator at FACETS CodeJam, Heidelberg.

02.04.2007 – 05.04.2007

Python interface for NEST completed at FACETS CodeJam, Heidelberg.

March 2007

Scholarpedia article on NEST published.

February 2007

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.

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.

2006-09-01

Diesmann reseach group moves to RIKEN BSI [12].

07.08.2006 – 01.09.2006

NEST is one of the software packages that has been used in the advanced course in computational neuroscience in Arcachon, France.

31.07.2006 – 11.08.2006

Introduction to NEST in the course “Simulation of biological neuronal networks” held at the BCCN in Freiburg.

16.07.2006 – 18.07.2006

NEST workshop at CNS Conference in Edinburgh.

February 2006

The website of the Black Forest Grid becomes operational.

25.05.06

Article describing technology for simulations with precise spike times accepted for publication by Neural Computation.

2005-11-01

A SUN V40z, 4 x Dual Core 2.2Ghz Opteron SMP system with 32GB memory arrives at the BCCN in Freiburg. The system’s mission is:

• explore the properties of complex cortical graphs
• explore hybrid algorithms for large scale simulations combining message-passing with multi-threading to exploit modern computer architectures

2005-09-01

The EU funded FACETS project (Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States) starts. NEST is one of the simulation tools used in this project.

01.08.2005 – 26.08.2005

NEST is one of the simulation tools used at the Computational Neuroscience Summer School in Arcachon, France.

17.07.2005 – 21.07.2005

Extended tutorial on NEST at the CNS*2005 Meeting in Madison, Wi.

18.01.2005 – 28.01.2005

Contribution to the Summer School on Advanced Scientific Computing in Alpine Heath Resort, Drakensberg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

15.05.05

The Freiburg based researchers of the NEST Initiative are among the founding members of the Black Forest Grid (also available in German ).

August/September 2004

Introduction of the Neuro Simulation Tool NEST at the Computational Neuroscience Summer School in Obidos, Portugal.

February 2004

Course Simulation of Biological Neural Networks at the University of Freiburg