NEST (software)


NEST is a simulation software for spiking neural network models, including large-scale neuronal networks. NEST was initially developed by Markus Diesmann and Marc-Oliver Gewaltig and is now developed and maintained by the NEST Initiative.

Modeling philosophy

A NEST simulation tries to follow the logic of an electrophysiological experiment that takes place inside a computer with the difference, that the neural system to be investigated must be defined by the experimenter.
The neural system is defined by a possibly large number of neurons and their connections. In a NEST network, different neuron and synapse models can coexist. Any two neurons can have multiple connections with different properties. Thus, the connectivity can in general not be described by a weight or connectivity matrix but rather as an adjacency list.
To manipulate or observe the network dynamics, the experimenter can define so-called devices which represent the various instruments found in an experiment. These devices write their data either to memory or to file.
NEST is extensible and new models for neurons, synapses, and devices can be added.

Example

The following example simulates spiking activity in a sparse random network with recurrent excitation and inhibition
The figure shows the spiking activity of 50 neurons as a raster plot. Time increases along the horizontal axis, neuron id increases along the vertical axis. Each dot corresponds to a spike of the respective neuron at a given time. The lower part of the figure shows a histogram with the mean firing-rate of the neurons.

import nest
import nest.raster_plot
J_ex = 0.1 # excitatory weight
J_in = -0.5 # inhibitory weight
p_rate = 20000. # external Poisson rate
neuron_params=
  1. Set parameters of neurons and devices
nest.SetDefaults
nest.SetDefaults
nest.SetDefaults
  1. Create neurons and devices
nodes_ex=nest.Create
nodes_in=nest.Create
noise=nest.Create
espikes=nest.Create
  1. Configure synapse models
nest.CopyModel
nest.CopyModel
  1. Connect the random net and instrument it with the devices
nest.Connect
nest.Connect
nest.Connect
nest.Connect
  1. Simulate for 100. ms
nest.Simulate
  1. Plot results
nest.raster_plot.from_device
nest.raster_plot.show

Features

Neuron models

NEST development was started in 1993 by Markus Diesmann and Marc-Oliver Gewaltig at the Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. At this time, the simulator was called SYNOD and simulations were defined in a stack based simulation language, called SLI.
In 2001, the software changed its name from SYNOD to NEST. Until 2004, NEST was exclusively developed and used by the founding members of the NEST Initiative. The first public release appeared in summer 2004. Since then, NEST was released regularly, about once or twice per year.
Since 2007, NEST supports hybrid parallelism, using POSIX threads and MPI.
In 2008, the stack-based simulation language SLI was superseded by a modern Python interface, however, the old simulation language is still used internally.
At the same time, the simulator independent specification language PyNN was developed with support for NEST.
In 2012, the NEST Initiative changed the license from the proprietary NEST License to GNU GPL V2 or later.

User interfaces