Artificial Simulator Of The Human Nervous System Created To Aid Research Into Di

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Artificial Simulator Of The Human Nervous System Created To Aid Research Into

Diseases And Test New Medicines

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/150080.php

Researchers of the University of Granada have developed a simulator, so-called

EDLUT ('Event driven look up table based simulator'), which allows reproduction

of any part of the body's nervous system, such as the retina, the cerebellum,

the hearing centres or the nervous centres. This scientific advance enables them

to analyze and understand the functions of the nervous centres, to do research

into new pathologies and diseases or test new medicines; it will also be useful

to improve the robots and machines inspired by the human body and the nervous

system.

This simulator has been developed by the research group CASIP, of the department

of Architecture and Computer Technology of the University of Granada, to which

professor Ros Vidal (coordinator of the projects in which the simulator

has been developed) belongs to.

Unlike other simulators similar to the preceding versions, EDLUT can deal with

several hundreds of thousands neurons at the same time, instead of several tens.

This is possible thanks to the fact that the simulator " compiles " the behaviour

of a neuron or several types of neurons in a first stage and then it simulates

medium and large-scale neuronal systems based on these pre-compiled models.

" This fact means an essential technological advance and indisputably affects the

quality of nervous simulation " , says professor Ros.

Free downloading

Another important advantage of the simulator developed at the University of

Granada is that it is free software, this is, it can be freely downloaded

through the Internet at http://code.google.com/p/edlut/. EDLUT is therefore " an

innovative version with regard to other simulators such as NEURON and GENESIS " ,

in the words of Ros, and those companies of the biotechnological sector or

research centres interested in this field can use it freely and adapt it to

their own needs.

This simulator developed at the UGR has been financed by different research

projects such as SpikeFORCE and SENSOPAC, initiatives of the European Commission

through which research groups of different fields such as neuroscience,

biocomputing and electronic engineers have been working since the year 2002 in

order to create robots with similar movement skills to those of the animals, and

can also perceive a great number of signs of sensors and motors in order to draw

cognitive notions.

Ros Vidal insists that SENSOPAC - a project which also has the

participation of DLR (German Aerospace Agency), and several universities such as

the University of Edinburgh, Erasmus, Pavia, Lund, Cambridge - " intends to be

the definitive boost that technology needs to generalize the use of robots in

our everyday life " .

The results of this research project have been partly published in the renowned

journals Neural Computation and Biosystems.

Reference: Prof Ros Vidal, Department of Architecture and Computer

Technology of the University of Granada

Source:

Ros Vidal

University of Granada