Copy models¶

NEST Simulator provides a function to copy a model together with its set of parameters. The nest.CopyModel() function is useful when multiple populations or synapses should be created with the same set of parameters. This simplifies the work a lot, as you can see in the example below:

Code without CopyModel	Code with CopyModel
`# Set parameter values params = { "C_m": 250, "E_L": 0, "I_e": 0, "V_m": 0, "V_reset": 0, "V_th": 20, "t_ref": 2, "tau_m": 20, "tau_syn_ex": 0.5, "tau_syn_in": 0.5, } n1_params = params.copy() n1_params["V_th"] = 15 # Create nodes n1 = nest.Create("iaf_psc_alpha", 100, n1_params) n2 = nest.Create("iaf_psc_alpha", 25, params)`	`# Copy node model with default parameters nest.CopyModel("iaf_psc_alpha", "brunel", params={ "C_m": 250, "E_L": 0, "I_e": 0, "V_m": 0, "V_reset": 0, "V_th": 20, "t_ref": 2, "tau_m": 20, "tau_syn_ex": 0.5, "tau_syn_in": 0.5, }) # Create nodes n1 = nest.Create("brunel", 100, params={"V_th": 15}) n2 = nest.Create("brunel", 25)`

Code without CopyModel

Code with CopyModel

# Set parameter values
params = {
  "C_m": 250,
  "E_L": 0,
  "I_e": 0,
  "V_m": 0,
  "V_reset": 0,
  "V_th": 20,
  "t_ref": 2,
  "tau_m": 20,
  "tau_syn_ex": 0.5,
  "tau_syn_in": 0.5,
}
n1_params = params.copy()
n1_params["V_th"] = 15

# Create nodes
n1 = nest.Create("iaf_psc_alpha", 100, n1_params)
n2 = nest.Create("iaf_psc_alpha", 25, params)

# Copy node model with default parameters
nest.CopyModel("iaf_psc_alpha", "brunel", params={
  "C_m": 250,
  "E_L": 0,
  "I_e": 0,
  "V_m": 0,
  "V_reset": 0,
  "V_th": 20,
  "t_ref": 2,
  "tau_m": 20,
  "tau_syn_ex": 0.5,
  "tau_syn_in": 0.5,
})

 # Create nodes
 n1 = nest.Create("brunel", 100, params={"V_th": 15})
 n2 = nest.Create("brunel", 25)

How to copy models - step by step¶

Click on the MODEL tab in the network controller and then select a model to copy. Then confirm with a click on COPY.

Enter the name of the new model. If you like to have other model parameters than the default one, just click on the model title and select the parameters you want to change. This shows sliders and fields to edit their values.

Choose the copied node model for your node and you are able to customize parameters as well.

Note

Copied synapse models can also be applied for synapses (analogously as above).