NESTML - A modeling language for spiking neuron and synapse models for NEST
Biological nervous systems exhibit astonishing complexity. Neuroscientists aim to capture this complexity by modeling and simulation of biological processes. Often very complex models are needed to represent these processes, which makes the models difficult to construct.
With increasing model complexity, models are typically re-used and evolved rather than starting from scratch. There is also a growing challenge in ensuring that these models can seamlessly work across various simulation backends and hardware platforms. This underscores the need to ensure that models are easily findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable — adhering to the FAIR principles. NESTML addresses these requirements by providing a domain-specific language for describing neuron and synapse models that covers a wide range of neuroscientific use cases.
The language is supported by a code generation toolchain that automatically generates low-level simulation code for a given target platform (for example, C++ code targeting NEST Simulator). Code generation allows an accessible and easy-to-use language syntax to be combined with good runtime simulation performance and scalability.
With an intuitive and highly generic language, combined with the generation of efficient, optimized simulation code supporting large-scale simulations, it opens up neuronal network model development and simulation as a research tool to a much wider community. While originally developed in the context of NEST Simulator, NESTML has been extended with support for a variety of simulation platforms, such as the SpiNNaker neuromorphic hardware platform. In collaboration with the group of Prof. Mayr at Dresden Technical University, support for SpiNNaker2, a new hardware iteration of the neuromorphic system, is under development.
The NESTML toolchain is open-source and hosted on GitHub; support is provided via GitHub Issues and the NEST-Users mailing list.
Related publications can be reduced to just this one:
Plotnikov, D; Blundell, I; Ippen, T; Eppler, J M; Morrison, A; Rumpe, B (2016) NESTML: a modeling language for spiking neurons. Modellierung 2016, Prof. Dr. Andreas Oberweis, Prof. Dr. Ralf Reussner, Bonn (eds.) Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.
Acknowledgements:
This software was initially supported by the JARA-HPC Seed Fund NESTML - A modeling language for spiking neuron and synapse models for NEST and the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association and the Helmholtz Portfolio Theme Simulation and Modeling for the Human Brain.
This software was developed in part or in whole in the Human Brain Project, funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation under Specific Grant Agreements No. 720270, No. 785907 and No. 945539 (Human Brain Project SGA1, SGA2 and SGA3).
This research has received funding by the Helmholtz Association through the Helmholtz Portfolio Theme Supercomputing and Modeling for the Human Brain.
SDL Neuroscience Contact(s)
SDL Neuroscience Team
Large Scale Simulation and Neuromorphic Systems