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README.md
Description
PointNICE is a Python implementation of the Neuronal Intramembrane Cavitation Excitation (NICE) model introduced by Plaksin et. al in 2014 and initially developed in MATLAB by its authors. It contains optimized methods to predict the electrical response of point-neuron models to both acoustic and electrical stimuli.
This package contains several core modules:
- bls defines the underlying biomechanical model of intramembrane cavitation (BilayerSonophore class), and provides an integration method to predict compute the mechanical oscillations of the plasma membrane subject to a periodic acoustic perturbation.
- solvers contains a simple solver for electrical stimuli (SolverElec class) as well as a tailored solver for acoustic stimuli (SolverUS class). The latter directly inherits from the BilayerSonophore class upon instantiation, and is hooked to a specific "channel mechanism" in order to link the mechanical model to an electrical model of membrane dynamics. It also provides several integration methods (detailed below) to compute the behaviour of the full electro-mechanical model subject to a continuous or pulsed ultrasonic stimulus.
- neurons contains the definitions of the different channels mechanisms inherent to specific neurons, including several types of cortical and thalamic neurons.
- plt defines plotting utilities to load results of several simulations and display/compare temporal profiles of multiple variables of interest across simulations.
- utils defines generic utilities used across the different modules
The SolverUS class incorporates optimized numerical integration methods to perform dynamic simulations of the model subject to acoustic perturbation, and compute the evolution of its mechanical and electrical variables:
- a classic method that solves all variables for the entire duration of the simulation. This method uses very small time steps and is computationally expensive (simulation time: several hours)
- a hybrid method (initially developed by Plaskin et al.) in which integration is performed in consecutive “slices” of time, during which the full system is solved until mechanical stabilization, at which point the electrical system is solely solved with predicted mechanical variables until the end of the slice. This method is more efficient (simulation time: several minutes) and provides accurate results.
- a newly developed effective method that neglects the high amplitude oscillations of mechanical and electrical variables during each acoustic cycle, to instead grasp the net effect of the acoustic stimulus on the electrical system. To do so, the sole electrical system is solved using pre-computed coefficients that depend on membrane charge and acoustic amplitude. This method allows to run simulations of the electrical system in only a few seconds, with very accurate results of the net membrane charge density evolution.
This package is meant to be easy to use as a predictive and comparative tool for researchers investigating ultrasonic and/or electrical neuro-stimulation experimentally.
Installation
Install Python 3 if not already done.
Open a terminal.
Activate a Python3 environment if needed, e.g. on the tnesrv5 machine:
source /opt/apps/anaconda3/bin activate
Check that the appropriate version of pip is activated:
pip --version
Go to the PointNICE directory (where the setup.py file is located) and install it as a package:
cd <path_to_directory> pip install -e .
PointNICE and all its dependencies will be installed.
Usage
Command line scripts
To run single simulations of a given point-neuron model under specific stimulation parameters, you can use the ASTIM_run.py and ESTIM_run.py command-line scripts provided by the package.
For instance, to simulate a regular-spiking neuron under continuous wave ultrasonic stimulation at 500kHz and 100kPa, for 150 ms:
python ASTIM_run.py -n=RS -f=500 -A=100 -t=150
Similarly, to simulate the electrical stimulation of a thalamo-cortical neuron at 10 mA/m2 for 150 ms:
python ESTIM_run.py -n=TC -A=10 -t=150
The simulation results will be save in an output PKL file in the current working directory. To view these results, you can use the dedicated
Batch scripts
To run a batch of simulations on different neuron types and spanning ranges of several stimulation parameters, you can run the ASTIM_batch.py and ESTIM_batch.py scripts. To do so, simply modify the stim_params and neurons variables with your own neuron types and parameter sweeps, and then run the scripts (without command-line arguments).