Realistic Modeling of Brain Structures with Remote Interaction between Simulations of the Inferior Olivary Neuron & the Cerebellar Purkinje Cell

August 1st, 1991 - August 1st, 1992

Categories: Applications, Supercomputing, Virtual Medicine, Visualization

About

Up until now, modeling of single neurons and neural networks has been relegated to single workstations or parallel computers. Our work involves the interaction between, and visualization of two neurons at geographically distant locations, computed on heterogeneous computer systems. At Caltech, the Intel Touchstone Delta (a roughly 500 processor MIMD supercomputer) simulated a cerebellar Purkinje cell, while in Chicago, a Sun Sparc station simulated an inferior olivary neuron. The two neurons were connected via a T3 line through Argonne National Laboratory, and all data generated during the interaction was simultaneously visualized on a Silicon Graphics Crimson on the exhibit floor of SIGGRAPH 92, in Chicago. This prototype is the first application of the Metacomputing paradigm (Smarr and Catlett 1992) in Computational Neuroscience.