What's new? as of Feb. 23, 2006

The NEURON Book

At long last it has been officially published and is now shipping. Amazon addicts can get it here.

New tools and features

The hottest new feature in the latest alpha version of NEURON will be welcomed by everyone who is interested in implementing models of associative synaptic plasticity. To quote the CVS log, this feature
extends the NET_RECEIVE block by introducing the FOR_NETCONS statement. i.e. FOR_NETCONS(same, args, as, netreceive) { stmt } which iterates over all NetCon objects that have this POINT_PROCESS or ARTIFICIAL_CELL as the target. The arglist must have the same number of args as the NET_RECEIVE arg list and must have the same units. If the units are missing, they are inherited by the corresponding arg of the NET_RECEIVE block. If an arg has the same name, it hides the NET_RECEIVE arg. The purpose is to allow straightforward specification of certain kinds of plasticity based on post synaptic state in the context of generalized synapses or artificial cells. It may have other uses as well.
Here's an example of a synaptic mechanism that uses this feature to implement a form of stream-specific spike-timing-dependent plasticity (the printf statements are purely for diagnostic purposes and can be commented out, once you have satisfied yourself that this is working properly).

To get the latest alpha version of NEURON go to the Download and Install page, click on the "Snapshots of alpha versions" link, and then choose the package that is appropriate for your system.

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