CX3D is a tool for simulating the growth of cortex in 3D developed at the Institute of Neuroinformatics of the University of Zürich and ETH Zürich.
The following figure taken from
Frédéric Zubler's PhD thesis shows the
results of a cortical development simulation. In a laminated structure representing the
cortical layers, various cells extend axons and dendrites, reproducing the typical
branching patterns of five different types of cortical neurons.
From left to right: a layer 2/3 pyramidal cell; a layer 4 spiny stellate cell;
a layer 5 pyramidal cell; a layer 6 pyramidal cell; and a layer 2/3 basket cell.
The top row shows the individual cells;
the bottom row shows the cells in the context of the cortical layers.
The following video generated from CX3D showing the simulation of the growth of a laminated, cortex-like structure was shown at the BIO-ICT Convergence Workshop in Brussels on 25th February 2010.
All enquiries about CX3D should be directed to Andreas Hauri.
Tutorial
Original Research Article:
Zubler, F. and Douglas, R. (2009) A framework for modeling the growth and development of neurons and networks.
Front. Comput. Neurosci. 3:25. doi:10.3389/neuro.10.025.2009
Sample code included in the source that produces the figures in the paper
Google groups discussion group http://groups.google.com/group/cx3d
cx3d-0.03.zip
CX3D is written in Java, which can be downloaded
here.
CX3D is distributed under the
GNU General Public License version 3:
CX3D is a tool for simulating the growth of cortex in 3D.
Copyright (C) 2009 Frédéric Zubler, Rodney J. Douglas, Dennis Göhlsdorf, Toby Weston, Andreas Hauri, Roman Bauer, Sabina Pfister & Adrian M. Whatley.
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
CX3D has been developed with the support of the
SECO EU Project (EU grant 216593).
