Overview

The cortical mesocircuit model is a lateral extension of the microcircuit model published by Potjans & Diesmann (2014).

Like the microcircuit, the mesocircuit represents four layers of cortex, L2/3, L4, L5, and L6, each consisting of a population of excitatory neurons and a population of inhibitory neurons. External input can be provided by a thalamic population TC.

The mesocircuit is a spatially structured network model covering 4x4 mm² of cortical surface area which is similar in size to multi-electrode arrays in use today.

The neurons of each population are assigned random positions in two-dimensional layers and they are connected with distance-dependent connection probabilities and conduction delays.

The densities of neurons and local synapses in the network are assumed to be realistic, amounting to ~1.2 million neurons and ~5.5 billion synapses.

The model accounts for both spiking activity simulated with NEST and local-field potentials relying on LFPy.

Status of model development

The mesocircuit is still under development and the neither the code nor a peer-reviewed manuscript have been published, yet.

To date, only a preprint with detailed model documentation and preliminary results is available on arXiv.org.

The Drive of this Collab provides access to a recent version of the model implementation.

The development of the mesocircuit model belongs to task "SGA2 T4.2.1 - Spiking mesoscale cortical models with spatial organization" and constitutes the component C2418.

The main contributors are Johanna Senk, Espen Hagen, Sacha J. van Albada and Markus Diesmann.