NESTML: a modeling language for spiking neurons

TL;DR

NESTML is a modular, extensible modeling language designed for neuroscientists to create detailed neuron models efficiently for the NEST simulation tool, supporting domain-specific concepts as first-class language constructs.

Contribution

It introduces NESTML, a new domain-specific language that simplifies neuron model creation with first-class neuroscience concepts and supports extensibility and modularity.

Findings

NESTML enables concise neuron model expression.

The language supports efficient code generation for simulations.

Models and tools are publicly available on GitHub.

Abstract

Biological nervous systems exhibit astonishing complexity .Neuroscientists aim to capture this com- plexity by modeling and simulation of biological processes. Often very comple xm odels are nec- essary to depict the processes, which makes it dif fi cult to create these models. Powerful tools are thus necessary ,which enable neuroscientists to express models in acomprehensi ve and concise way and generate ef fi cient code for digital simulations. Se veral modeling languages for computational neuroscience ha ve been proposed [Gl10, Ra11]. Howe ver, as these languages seek simulator inde- pendence the ytypically only support asubset of the features desired by the modeler .Int his article, we present the modular and extensible domain speci fi cl anguage NESTML, which provides neuro- science domain concepts as fi rst-class language constructs and supports domain experts in creating neuron models for the neural simulation tool NEST .N ESTML and aset of example models are publically available on GitHub.