14 - 19 OCTOBER, 2012. SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, USA

VisNEST - Interactive Analysis of Neural Activity Data

Contributors: 
Christian Nowke, Bernd Hentschel, Torsten Kuhlen, Jochen Eppler, Sacha van Albada, Rembrandt Bakker, Markus Diesmann, Maximilian Schmidt
Description
Modeling and simulating a brain's connectivity produces an immense amount of data, which has to be analyzed in a timely fashion. Neuroscientists are currently modeling parts of the brain e.g. the visual cortex of primates like Macaque monkeys in order to deduce functionality and transfer newly gained insights to the human brain. Current research leverages the power of today's High Performace Computing (HPC) machines in order to simulate low level neural activity. In this paper, we describe an interactive analysis tool that enables neuroscientists to visualize the resulting simulation output. One of the driving challenges behind our development is the integration of macroscopic data, e.g. brain areas, with microscopic simulation results, e.g. spiking behavior of individual neurons.