MACULAR: Numerical platform for large scale simulations of the retina in pathological conditions
Abstract
Macular is a simulation platform for the retina and the primary visual cortex, designed to reproduce the response to visual stimuli or to electrical stimuli produced by retinal prostheses, in normal vision conditions, or affected (pharmacology, pathology, development). The objective is to provide a tool that can be used by neuroscientists in order to reproduce experimental results, but also to guide their experiments through hypotheses that can be tested in the simulator. This can save a considerable amount of resources required to conduct in vivo experiments.
Macular is built around a central idea: its use and its graphical interface can evolve according to the user’s objectives. It can therefore be used in user-designed scenarios, such as simulation of retinal waves, simulation of retinal and cortical responses to prosthetic stimulation, study of the pharmacological impact on the retinal response, etc.
Macular’s modular architecture makes it flexible and allows easy implementation of new features. It also includes a script option, via the “Macular Template Engine”, which gives the user the ability to design their own template, with a given set of equations, variables and parameters, without having to write code. C ++. Finally, thanks to its highly parallelizable architecture, Macular can simulate a large number of cells of different classes.
