Article,
PCSIM: a parallel simulation environment for neural circuits fully integrated with Python
Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, (2009)
DOI: 10.3389/neuro.11.011.2009
Abstract
The Parallel Circuit SIMulator (PCSIM) is a software
package for simulation of neural circuits. It is primarily
designed for distributed simulation of large scale networks of
spiking point neurons. Although its computational core is
written in C++, PCSIM’s primary interface is
implemented in the Python programming language, which is a
powerful programming environment and allows the user to easily
integrate the neural circuit simulator with data analysis and
visualization tools to manage the full neural modeling life
cycle. The main focus of this paper is to describe
PCSIM’s full integration into Python and the
benefits thereof. In particular we will investigate how the
automatically generated bidirectional interface and
PCSIM’s object-oriented modular framework
enable the user to adopt a hybrid modeling approach: using and
extending PCSIM’s functionality either
employing pure Python or C++ and thus combining the advantages
of both worlds. Furthermore, we describe several supplementary
PCSIM packages written in pure Python and tailored towards
setting up and analyzing neural simulations.
