Analog circuits emulating biological neurons in real-time experiments

A new approach to carry out experiments on neural systems is presented. The authors show the interest in using analog circuits to emulate in real-time the electrical activity of neurons. They present a set of electronic modules dedicated to the precise modeling of biological neural networks. They prove the ability of such devices to dynamically interact with real neurons in an in vitro preparation and so to perform a powerful tool for computational neuroscientists. As an application, these circuits are used to model a complex neuron, known to be part of the lobster stomatogastric ganglion. Artificial synapses are then built between this real-time running analog neuron and in vitro neurons of that ganglion.