www.neuron.yale.edu

I want to create a netstim like mechanism but with a time modulated rate.

The easiest ways coming to my mind to implement this are

• to play a vector into a parameter of the mechanism
• or alternatively to play the vector into an auxilary variable and then making this variable available to the mechanism via a pointer.

I want to do this in a setting in which many netstims operate independently but using the same (shared) modulated rate.

Are there a priori reasons to expect one of these alternatives to be faster then the other especially in the case we use variable timestep?

many netstims operate independently but using the same (shared) modulated rate

If the rate is a function of time, each netstim NET_RECEIVE block can compute the rate when needed but if the
aggregate number of netstim events is greater than 1 per timestep then it makes sense to compute the function on
a per time step basis. Again, if the rate is an explicit function of time then I'd use a POINT_PROCESS which
evaluates the function in an INITIAL and AFTER SOLVE block and then connect to the netstim with a POINTER
in the netstim.

The whole thing is threadsafe if you have one instance of the POINT_PROCESS per thread and
are careful to connect each netstim POINTER in a thread to the POINT_PROCESS function value in that thread.
Oops. I see I have no provision for assigning an ARTIFICIAL_CELL to a thread or determining which thread it is in.
So the work around would be to use POINT_PROCESS for the netstim and create acell_home[] section for each thread
and put the netstim and function evaluator on those. See:
http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/stati ... #partition
http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/stati ... _in_thread