Spiking Neuron Network
This is a sheet of simple spiking neurons, each an integrate-and-fire unit that builds up voltage from its neighbours’ spikes and fires when it crosses threshold, then briefly rests. Wire them with a mix of excitatory and inhibitory connections and small currents, and the sheet comes alive: single spikes trigger travelling waves, spirals and echoes, and under the right balance the whole network locks into rhythmic synchronised bursts. Click to inject spikes, drag the coupling strength, the inhibition fraction and the background drive, and watch activity, the firing raster and the population rhythm respond — a toy model of the dynamics behind brain waves.
Runs 100% in your browser — simulations are computed locally on your device.
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Notes
- Each neuron integrates incoming spikes into a membrane voltage and fires when it reaches threshold, then enters a refractory rest — the leaky integrate-and-fire model used throughout computational neuroscience.
- Excitatory links spread activity while inhibitory links quench it; the balance between them decides whether the network is silent, seizes into runaway firing, or settles into stable travelling waves.
- With enough coupling the neurons synchronise into collective rhythmic bursts, the small-scale analogue of the oscillations an EEG records across the whole brain.
- Runs 100% in your browser — simulations are computed locally on your device.
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