Design and Implementation of a Neocortical Visualization Tool

Abstract

A core goal for neuroscientists is to understand the physiological processes behind memory, learning, and cognition. By developing computational models of the brain, scientists can simulate how neurons interact with each other and study these interactions more closely. However, these simulations often require technical expertise to create and can be difficult to analyze due to a lack of comprehensive visualization tools. Neocortical View, or NCV for short, aims to solve these problems by providing a simple, convenient graphical interface for managing virtual brain models. NCV interacts with the Neurocortical Simulator developed by the Brain Computation Laboratory at UNR, allowing users to build models, distribute simulations across the available hardware, and view the current network state in 3D. It provides an intuitive and extensible simulation platform with a reduced learning curve, abstracting away the complex setup and analysis of neural simulations and allowing neuroscientists to focus on neuroscience.