PsyNeuLink#
PsyNeuLink is an open-source, software environment written in Python, and designed for the needs of neuroscientists, psychologists, computational psychiatrists and others interested in learning about and building models of the relationship between brain function, mental processes and behavior.
PsyNeuLink can be used as a “block modeling environment”, in which to construct, simulate, document, and exchange computational models of neural mechanisms and/or psychological processes at the subsystem and system levels. A block modeling environment allows components to be constructed that implement various, possibly disparate functions, and then link them together into a system to examine how they interact. In PsyNeuLink, components are used to implement the function of brain subsystems and/or psychological processes, the interaction of which can then be simulated at the system level.
The purpose of PsyNeuLink is to make it as easy as possible to create new and/or import existing models, and integrate them to simluate system-level interactions. It provides a suite of core components for implementing models of various forms of processing, learning, and control, and its Library includes examples that combine these components to implement published models. As an open source project, its suite of components is meant to be enhanced and extended, and its library is meant to provide an expanding repository of models, written in a concise, executable, and easy to interpret form, that can be shared, compared, and extended by the scientific community.