Table 1.
History of GUI development in computational neuroscience
| Development | GUI | Simulator | Environment | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | GENESIS GUI | GENESIS | x11 | Bower and Beeman (2012) |
| 1993 | NEURON GUI | NEURON | x11 | Hines (1993), Hines and Carnevale (1997) |
| 1995 | SLIDE | NEST | x11 | Matyak (1996), Gewaltig et al. (1996) |
| 2007 | neuroConstruct | multiple | x11 | Gleeson et al. (2007) |
| 2008 | SNN3DViewer | none | x11 | Kasiński et al. (2009) |
| 2009 | Neuronvisio | NEURON | x11 (qt4) | Mattioni et al. (2012) |
| 2011 | nuSPIC | NEST | HTML | Vlachos et al. (2013) |
| 2012 | The Virtual Brain (TVB) | TVB | HTML | Sanz Leon et al. (2013) |
| 2013 | N2A (Neurons to Algorithms) | multiple | x11 (qt5) | Rothganger et al. (2014) |
| 2013 | SpineCreator | PyNN | x11 (qt5) | Cope et al. (2017) |
| 2013 | VisNEST | none (NEST) | VR | Nowke et al. (2013) |
| 2014 | Neuronify | Neuronify | x11 (qt5) | Dragly et al. (2017) |
| 2014 | Open Source Brain (OSB) | PyNN | HTML | Gleeson et al. (2019) |
| 2015 | Nengo GUI | Nengo | HTML | https://github.com/nengo/nengo-gui |
| 2015 | ViSimpl | none | x11 (qt5) | Galindo et al. (2016) |
| 2016 | NEST Desktop | NEST | HTML | https://github.com/nest-desktop/nest-desktop |
| 2016 | VIOLA | none | HTML | Senk et al. (2018) |
| 2016 | Visbrain | none | x11 (qt5) | Combrisson et al. (2019) |
| 2017 | NESTInstrumentationApp | NEST | HTML | https://github.com/compneuronmbu |
| 2017 | NetPyNE UI | NetPyNE | HTML | Dura-Bernal et al. (2019) |
| 2017 | NEURON UI | NEURON | HTML | https://github.com/MetaCell/NEURON-UI |
| 2018 | CellExplorer | none | x11 (qt5) | Petersen et al. (2021) |
GUIs are ordered chronologically according to the estimated beginning of their development phase (mentioned in a paper or first commit in a public repository). Most GUIs are coupled with a simulation engine in a specific front end environment. If a GUI is independent of specific simulators, the respective entry is “none”. “none (NEST)” in the case of VisNEST means that the application has full operational function without the simulator NEST but it can be connected to it. For more information, the last column lists the corresponding publications or refers to the source code.