Neuroinformatics

A Brunsviga hand cranked mechanical calculator as used by Hodgkin and Huxley to compute numerically the solutions to their differential equations for the action potential in the squid giant axon in 1952.

 

A more recent 2007 IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer used in the Blue Brain Project, with thousands of processors. (Image credit: Wikipedia.)

Neuroinformatics is concerned with developing computational techniques for understanding the brain. Specifically, processing and analysing experimental data, and simulating models. This work is becoming increasingly important as neuroscientists study larger and more detailed systems, requiring the use of high performance computational techniques which are not, as yet, easily accessible for non-experts. Much of our research is about leveraging modern, heterogeneous forms of computing such as GPUs and FPGAs, but making them accessible to neuroscience researchers.

Our main ongoing area of research is in simulating spiking neural networks: on the design of the Brian simulator and related software packages.

If you are interested in working on these types of problems, please see our openings page and the list of suggested research topics. See also the list of neuroinformatics publications below for an idea of the sort of research we have done in this field in the past.

European network for immersive audio.

Auditory Model Initiative

Python/Matlab package for comparing binaural auditory models.

HumanlikeHearing

Python package for psychophysical tests of automatic speech recognition systems.

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