Latest news

NEURON 7.7.2 is now available for download. It is the recommended version for all new projects.

New features since NEURON 7.6 include:

• Reaction-diffusion enhancements
  • Reimplemented reaction-diffusion simulation support, providing ~10x faster simulations with JIT compiled reactions
  • faster 3D voxelization
  • rxd.Parameters can now be used as fixed concentrations
  • support for specifying electrophysiology models (see, e.g. the Hodgkin-Huxley model implemented using the rxd framework)
  • extracellular simulation support enabled by default
  • SBML export.
  • See the tutorials for examples.
• Python-graphics aware .plot methods for RangeVarPlot and PlotShape.
• Mechanism introspection using new .code() and .file() methods in MechanismType.
• Updated help documentation; all examples should work for both Python 2 and 3.
• Ontology tagging with REPRESENTS keyword for NMODL and represents keyword for rxd.Species.
• Can now initialize MPI with h.nrnmpi_init(); i.e. no need for special flags or mpi4py.
• neuron.units submodule to simplify model specification.
• All platforms can now use nrnivmodl to compile NMODL files; previously Windows could not.
• Python-API enhancements
  • h.SectionList 
    • constructor now accepts a Python iterable of sections
    • methods accept a section argument; no need for sec=
  • Vectors
    • can directly set values; e.g. vec[3] = 42
    • vector.record now returns the vector, allowing one line recording specification; e.g. v = h.Vector().record(soma(0.5)._ref_v)
  • More compact syntax for h.distance and h.RangeVarPlot
  • Simpler NMODL pointer setting; instead of using h.setpointer, can use, e.g. seg._ref_POINTER_suffix = ptr
  • new Section methods: wholetree, subtree that return Python lists of sections
  • new Segment method: volume
  • More meaningful return data types for CVode methods

The 2019 NEURON Summer Course will be held at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis from Monday, June 10, through Saturday, June 15.

The course will present a thorough introduction to computational modeling of neurons and networks with NEURON, and is suitable for individuals at all levels of expertise. This year continues the 6 day curriculum we introduced in 2017 in order to provide expanded coverage of parallel simulation, and to give participants more time for active learning exercises.

The registration deadline is Friday, May 31, 2019.  No applications will be accepted after that date, and there will be no on-site registration.  Space is limited, and applications will be considered in the order received.

For more information and the on-line registration form, see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/summer2019/summer2019.html

The one-day 2018 NEURON Short Course will be held in San Diego, California on Friday, November 2, 2018.

The course emphasizes practical issues key to productive use of NEURON, including: efficient design and implementation of models and networks, expanding NEURON's repetoire of biophysical mechanisms, and databases for empirically based modeling.

The registration deadline is Friday, October 12, 2018.  No applications will be accepted after that date, and there will be no on-site registration.  Space is limited, and applications will be considered in the order received.

For more information and the on-line registration form, see https://neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/sd2018/sd2018.html

NEURON 7.6.2 is now available for download.

New features since NEURON 7.5 include:

• Simplified installation
  • Accepting the default install options now allows running from command line and GUI in Mac and Windows.
• Enhanced Jupyter notebook support
  • NEURON error messages now display inside the notebook
  • Experimental notebook ShapePlot available through neuron.gui2
• GUI improvements and bug fixes
  • Sections created in Python are now selectable using the NEURON GUI's "Plot What" functionality
  • MovieRun now works when NEURON is run via Python
  • Per-segment colorization of Shape objects via shape.color(colorindex, seg)
• Extracellular reaction-diffusion support (described in Newton et al., 2018)
  • Available through the neuron.crxd module which also supports intracellular reaction-diffusion with just-in-time compiled reactions
• Miscellaneous enhancements and bug fixes
  • NEURON methods now return appropriate data types (int/bool/float), e.g. pc.nhost() now returns an int
  • Enhanced comparison support for NEURON objects
  • New section methods for morphologies, e.g. sec.pt3dadd()
  • New sec.psection() methods provides a data structure describing that section's properties
  • NetCon.preloc() and NetCon.preseg() now return true NetCon locations
  • Import3D now ignores blank lines in SWC files

The tutorial will present recent advances in methodologies for simulating the electrophysiology of cells and networks in the context of lower and higher scales or organization. At the lower scale, we will describe the simulation of intracellular chemical signals including calcium in subcellular compartments (dendrites and spines), with application to understanding of synaptic plasticity and the response of neuronal dynamics to modulators. At higher scales, we consider the brain as an organ, situating neurons in a complex environment of modulators, ions, and metabolism. The NEURON simulator will be used to illustrate the interactions among these levels, using NEURON's rxd reaction-diffusion module for intracellular and extracellular chemophysiology, and NetPyNE (www.netpyne.org) for managing parameters and for building complex networks of detailed cells as brain structures. We will also introduce new graphical methods (GUIs) for managing these extremely complex simulations. For more information see http://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2018-tutorials#T2.

The 2018 NEURON Summer Course will be held at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, from Monday, August 6, through Saturday, August 11.

The course will present a thorough introduction to computational modeling of neurons and networks with NEURON, and is suitable for individuals at all levels of expertise.  This year continues the 6 day curriculum we introduced last year in order to provide expanded coverage of parallel simulation, and to give participants more time for active learning exercises.

The registration deadline is Monday, July 16, 2018.  No applications will be accepted after that date, and there will be no on-site registration.  Space is limited, and applications will be considered in the order received.

For more information and the on-line registration form, see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/summer2018/summer2018.html

Friday, Oct. 27 is the registration deadline for the one day course on NEURON 
http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/dc2017/dc2017.html 
and the half day workshop on the Neuroscience Gateway 
http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nsg2017/nsg2017.html.
Space is still available at these events, but if you want to sign up, you'll have to act quickly.

More and more NEURON users are employing Python to build models, so we're making it easier to jump right to NEURON's Python documentation. Click on the "Programmer's Reference" link in the list of resources on the Documentation page, or at the top of any of this site's pages, and you'll see the front page of the Python documentation. If you need the hoc documentation, just click on the "Switch to HOC documentation" link near the top of that page.

From 9 AM to 6 PM on Thursday, July 20, 2017--just next week!--Robert McDougal and others will be speaking at an OCNS meeting workshop on Reaction diffusion modeling in Antwerp, Belgium. Learn the latest about NEURON's RxD (reaction diffusion) module, as well as approaches to reaction diffusion used by other advanced simulation tools such as MCell, MOOSE, and NeuroRD.

We are also announcing two satellite sessions to the 2017 Society for Neuroscience meeting: a 1 day course on NEURON that will be held from 9 AM to 5 PM on Friday, Nov. 10, and a half day workshop from 9 AM to noon on Saturday, Nov. 11, on how to use the Neuroscience Gateway Portal for computationally intensive modeling and data analysis tasks.

For more information about these events, including registration instructions, see NEURON's Courses page https://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/courses

From 9 AM to 6 PM on Thursday, July 20, 2017, a workshop on Reaction diffusion modeling for neurobiology will be held in connection with the CNS 2017 meeting in Antwerp, Belgium. Among the many speakers will be Bill Lytton and Robert McDougal, who will probably have something to say about NEURON's RxD (reaction diffusion) module. This workshop will be a great opportunity to learn the latest about the approaches used by advanced simulation tools such as MCell, MOOSE, NEURON, NeuroRD and others to deal with models that involve reaction diffusion, and the kinds of scientific questions that are being studied with these tools. For more information, including schedule, speakers, and how to register, see https://neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/ram/cns2017rxd/index.html