Preprint available

[ted@SPENCER.CTAN.YALE.EDU]

A preprint of 

   The NEURON Simulation Environment
   M.L. Hines and N.T. Carnevale
   Neural Computation, in press

is now available in PostScript for UNIX systems as
   ftp.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/papers/nsimenv.ps.Z
and for MSDOS systems as
   ftp.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/papers/nsimenps.zip
The only difference between these two files is the method of
compression.  Length about 250K, expands to about 600K when
uncompressed.

An HTML formatted version has been posted at
   http://www.nnc.yale.edu/papers/nrnrefs.html
This is graced by convenient internal and external links.

The paper contains much helpful material that has not appeared
elsewhere, and should be of interest both to current users and to
those who are deciding what simulation tools to choose.  This list of
section headings gives an idea of what is covered.

       1. INTRODUCTION
           1.1 The problem domain
           1.2 Experimental advances and quantitative modeling
       2. OVERVIEW OF NEURON
       3. MATHEMATICAL BASIS
           3.1 The cable equation
           3.2 Spatial discretization in a biological context:
               sections and segments
           3.3 Integration methods
                3.3.1 Efficiency
       4. THE NEURON SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT
           4.1 The hoc interpreter
           4.2 A specific example
                4.2.1 First step: establish model topology
                4.2.2 Second step: assign anatomical
                      and biophysical properties
                4.2.3 Third step: attach stimulating electrodes
                4.2.4 Fourth step: control simulation time course
           4.3 Section variables
           4.4 Range variables
           4.5 Specifying geometry: stylized vs. 3-D
           4.6 Density mechanisms and point processes
           4.7 Graphical interface
           4.8 Object-oriented syntax
                4.8.1 Neurons
                4.8.2 Networks
       5. SUMMARY
       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
       REFERENCES

--Ted