Brian 2 documentation

Brian is a simulator for spiking neural networks. It is written in the Python programming language and is available on almost all platforms. We believe that a simulator should not only save the time of processors, but also the time of scientists. Brian is therefore designed to be easy to learn and use, highly flexible and easily extensible.

To get an idea of what writing a simulation in Brian looks like, take a look at a simple example, or run our interactive demo.

You can actually edit and run the examples in the browser without having to install Brian, using the Binder service (note: sometimes this service is down or running slowly):

http://mybinder.org/badge.svg

Once you have a feel for what is involved in using Brian, we recommend you start by following the installation instructions, then going through the tutorials, and finally reading the User Guide.

While reading the documentation, you will see the names of certain functions and classes are highlighted links (e.g. PoissonGroup). Clicking on these will take you to the “reference documentation”. This section is automatically generated from the code, and includes complete and very detailed information, so for new users we recommend sticking to the User’s guide. However, there is one feature that may be useful for all users. If you click on, for example, PoissonGroup, and scroll down to the bottom, you’ll get a list of all the example code that uses PoissonGroup. This is available for each class or method, and can be helpful in understanding how a feature works.

Finally, if you’re having problems, please do let us know at our support page.

Contents:

Indices and tables