Section: Software and Platforms

CLONES: Closed-Loop Neural Simulations

Participant : Thomas Voegtlin.

The goal of this work is to provide an easy-to-use framework for closed-loop simulations, where interactions between the brain and body of an agent are simulated.

We developed an interface between the Sofa physics engine, (http://www.sofa-framework.org ) and the Brian neural simulator (http://www.briansimulator.org ). The interface consists in a Sofa plugin and a Python module for Brian. Sofa and Brian use different system processes, and communicate via shared memory. Synchronization between processes is achieved through semaphores.

As a demonstration of this interface, a physical model of undulatory locomotion in the nematode c. elegans was implemented, based on the PhD work of Jordan H. Boyle.