Brian package structure¶

List of modules with descriptions of contents:

Root package

base
Shared base classes for some Brian clases. At the moment, just the ObjectContainer class used to implement the contained_objects protocol.
clock
The Clock object, guess_clock() function, and other clock manipulation functions.
compartments
A class used in compartmental modelling (see user documentation).
connection
Everything to do with connections, including the Connection and DelayConnection classes, but also construction/connection matrices and connection vector code. One of the longest and most technical parts of Brian.
correlatedspikes
A tool for producing correlated spike trains.
directcontrol
Classes for producing groups which fire spikes at user specified times.
equations
Everything to do with the Equations class.
globalprefs
Global preferences for Brian, a few routines for getting and setting.
group
A base class for NeuronGroup which creates an _S attribute from an Equations object with the appropriate dynamical variables, and allows these variables to be accessed by e.g. grp.V by overriding the __getattr__ and __setattr__ methods.
inspection
Utility functions for inspecting namespaces, checking consistency of equations, some code manipulation, etc.
log
Brian’s somewhat under-developed logging capabilities.
magic
Classes and functions for tracking and finding instances of classes.
membrane_equations
More code for compartmental modelling (see user docs).
monitor
All the monitors, including SpikeMonitor and StateMonitor.
network
The Network and MagicNetwork classes as well as the NetworkOperation class. Also includes the run(), etc. functions.
neurongroup
The NeuronGroup definition and some related stuff, including linked variables (the LinkedVar class) and PoissonGroup.
optimiser
Some tools for freezing expressions (converting e.g. 3*ms into 0.003) and simplifying some equations (e.g. a/(10*ms) converted to a*100).
plotting
Plotting tools, mostly raster_plot.
quantityarray
A leftover from the day when Brian had support for arrays with units, will be removed when practical.
reset
Reset classes.
stateupdater
State update classes and the magic_state_updater() function.
stdp
STDP features.
stdunits
Standard unit names such as mV for mvolt, etc.
stp
Short term plasticity features.
threshold
Threshold classes.
timedarray
The TimedArray class and related functions.
units
The Brian units package, including the Quantity class.
unitsafefunctions
Some functions which override the numpy ones which are safe to use with units, e.g. sin(3*volt) raises a dimensionality error.

``library`` subpackage

electrophysiology
Electrophysiology library with electrode and amplifier models.
IF
Integrate-and-fire models (leaky, quadratic, exponential...).
ionic_currents
Ionic current models (K+, Na+...).
random_processes
Currently only Ornstein-Uhlenbeck.
synapses
Synaptic models (exponential, alpha and biexponential models).

``utils`` subpackage

approximatecomparisons
Some tools for doing approximate comparisons with floating point numbers (because they are inexact).
autodiff
Automatic differentiation routines (for single-valued functions).
circular and the ccircular subpackage
The important SpikeContainer and related classes. The C version uses SWIG and is much faster but requires the user to compile themselves at the moment (this will be addressed at some point in the future).
documentation
Some utility functions related to documentation.
information_theory
Entropy and mutual information estimators. Requires the ANN wrapper in scikits.
parallelpython
A utility function for using the Parallel Python module.
parameters
The Parameters class, basically independent of Brian but potentially useful.
progressreporting
A progress reporting framework which Network.run() can use to report how long it is taking to run, with text or graphical options.
statistics
Statistics of spike trains (CV, vector strength, correlograms...).
tabulate
Tabulation of numerical functions (precalculation).