# Computer Methods for Physiological Problems

> **NIH NIH R01** · YALE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $366,406

## Abstract

Project Summary
 This project provides the core facility needed by the NEURON user community through
management of development, maintenance, dissemination, and teaching. NEURON is an open
source simulator for neurons and neural circuits that runs under OS X, MS Windows, and
UNIX/Linux, on hardware ranging from laptops to massively parallel supercomputers. More
than 1900 publications report work done with it. Many projects contribute to NEURON's
capabilities, and many more depend on its continued development and support.
 Our development plan addresses challenges faced by NEURON users in working with
experimentally-driven models of cells and networks, whose increasing complexity poses a
growing computational burden. These models are well suited to large computer clusters, but
much greater performance is achievable by exploiting the architecture of new hardware such
as the NVIDIA GPU and the many core Intel PHI. Factoring out NEURON’s solver engine into
a standalone CoreNEURON program cut memory use by an order of magnitude and makes it
possible to focus on architecture-specific memory layout for optimal performance. This must
now be transformed into a dynamically loadable library to allow the standard interpreter control
required for interactive model development and simulation analysis.
 Increased model complexity also requires special measures to facilitate the construction,
analysis, and reuse of empirically based computational models. We will extend NEURON’s
ModelView tool to display subcellular model specifications described with NEURON’s model
description language (NMODL). These specifications will also be used to generate equivalent
model descriptions compliant with NeuroML’s Low Entropy Modeling System (LEMS) standard.
These changes will allow entire cell model descriptions to be translated from NEURON to
NeuroML, and enable full interoperability between NEURON and other NeuroML compatible
simulators.
 Dissemination and support activities will include: software maintenance necessary to
ensure that users continue to be able to run NEURON under all combinations of OS X, MS
Windows, UNIX/Linux, and with any or no version of Python and MPI; active support of users
through email and the NEURON Forum; creation of new documentation and publication of
articles and reports; presenting courses and organizing meetings of NEURON users.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9932513
- **Project number:** 5R01NS011613-44
- **Recipient organization:** YALE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** MICHAEL L HINES
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $366,406
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1978-08-01 → 2022-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9932513

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9932513, Computer Methods for Physiological Problems (5R01NS011613-44). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9932513. Licensed CC0.

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