The CNS18 meeting organizers have accepted our Tutorial proposal titled: Multiscale modeling from molecular level to large network level (using NEURON, RxD and NetPyNE) and organized by Drs. Salvador Dura-Bernal (SUNY Downstate, USA), Robert McDougal (Yale University) and William Lytton (SUNY Downstate). It will take place on July 13 in Seattle, USA.
This tutorial will present recent multiscale modeling tool development in the NEURON simulator [3], with an emphasis on reaction diffusion intracellular and extracellular modeling (chemophysiology complementing electrophysiology) and simulation of large biophysically detailed networks. The morning session will introduce 1) the basics of single cell modeling using the NEURON simulator and 2) NEURON's Reaction-Diffusion (RxD) module [4, 5]. RxD provides specification and simulation for molecular scale dynamics (genomics, proteomics, signaling cascades and reaction dynamics) coupled with the electrophysiological dynamics of the cell membrane. The afternoon session will introduce 1) basic network modeling in NEURON [6, 7], and 2) NetPyNE, a high-level Python interface (programmatic and GUI-based) to NEURON that facilitates the development, parallel simulation, and analysis of biological neuronal networks [8, 9, 10]. To finish, we will show an example of combining both tools to explore the effects of molecular-level dynamics in a large network.