Simulation Neuroscience is an emerging approach to integrate the knowledge dispersed throughout the field of neuroscience.

The aim is to build a unified empirical picture of the brain, to study the biological mechanisms of brain function, behaviour and disease. This is achieved by integrating diverse data sources across the various scales of experimental neuroscience, from molecular to clinical, into computer simulations.

In this course, you will gain the knowledge and skills needed to analyze and simulate microcircuit models of the rodent hippocampus.

This course is part of a series of three courses, where you will learn to use state-of-the-art modeling tools to simulate neurons, build neural networks, and perform your own simulation experiments. We invite you to join us and share in our passion to reconstruct, simulate and understand the brain!

What you’ll learn:

• The role of the hippocampus in  fundamental cognitive functions such as learning, memory, and spatial navigation


• Identify typical electrophysiological behaviours of neuronal circuits in the hippocampus and understand their functional role


• Conduct actual simulations of a microcircuit model


• Analyze a simulation of a microcircuit and validate its behaviour against empirical data

Meet the instructors

Dr. Armando Romani, Postdoctoral Fellow and Group Leader of the Circuits team within the Simulation Neuroscience Division, Blue Brain Project

Dr. Srikanth Ramaswamy, Computational neuroscientist, Principal Investigator at Newcastle University

Dr. Szalbocs Káli, Laboratory of Cerebral Cortex Research at the Institute of Experimental Medicine of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Prof. Audrey Mercer, UCL School of Pharmacology

Dr. Judit Planas, Section Manager, Scientific Visualization, Blue Brain Project

Fabien Petitjean, Systems Specialist, Blue Brain Project

Prof. Michele Migliori, National Research Council (CNR), Italy

Prof. Felix Schürmann, Adjunct Professor EPFL, Director of Computing, Blue Brain Project

Andras Ecker, PhD Student, Blue Brain Project

Jean-Denis Courcol, Section Manager, Neuroscientific Software Engineering

Werner van Geit, Group Leader of the Cells team within the Simulation Neuroscience Division, Blue Brain Project

Dr. Michael Reimann, Group Leader for Connectomics within the Simulation Neuroscience Division, Blue Brain Project

Level and effort

The course is targeted at master or PhD students in science or engineering fields looking for an introduction to simulating neuronal circuits.

It is a five-week course, with an estimated course load of 5-7 hours per week.

Suggested requirements

Knowledge of programming in python.

Register for the MOOC:

You can register for this course here: Register