Multi-scale models of the rat and mouse brain integrate models of ion channels, single cells, microcircuits, brain regions, and brain systems at different levels of granularity (molecular models, morphologically detailed cellular models, and abstracted point neuron models).
Blue Brain’s reconstruction and related simulations are made possible by a comprehensive software ecosystem for each step in the reconstruction and simulation process. Blue Brain systematically releases open source software.
The online tools available to assist users with simulation neuroscience are a collection of platforms and atlases from the Blue Brain and our collaborators.
Data is of vital importance to the study of the Brain. For neuroscientists in this section, there are ion channel recordings, morphological reconstructions, electrical recordings from neocorticol neurons and molecular properties of neurons. These are available on Blue Brain platforms and the Human Brain Project Brain Simulation platform.
Simulation Neuroscience is an emerging approach to integrate the knowledge dispersed throughout the field of neuroscience.
In a front-cover paper published in Cerebral Cortex, EPFL’s Blue Brain Project, a Swiss Brain Research Initiative, explains how the shapes of neurons can be classified using mathematical methods from the field of algebraic topology. Neuroscientists can now start building a formal catalogue for all the types of cells in the brain. Onto this catalogue of cells, they can systematically map the function and role in disease of each type of neuron in the brain.
The Blue Brain Project is delighted to announce that it will be hosting in May this year, the second Neuromodulation of Neural Microcircuits NM² Conference.
The overarching goal of the second NM² Conference is to provide a unifying and mechanistic view by which an ever increasing number of neuromodulators, including monoamines, and peptides – the master switches – control genes, proteins, neurons and glia, dendrites, synapses, and emergent states in neural microcircuits across different brain regions in health and disease.