Emergent (formerly PDP++) is
neural simulation software that is primarily intended for creating models of the brain and cognitive processes. Development initially began in 1995 at
Carnegie Mellon University, and , continues at the
University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado s ...
. The 3.x release of the software, which was known as PDP++, is featured in the textbook ''Computational Explorations in Cognitive Neuroscience''.
Features
Emergent features a modular design, based on the principles of
object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of " objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...
. It runs on
Microsoft Windows,
Darwin
Darwin may refer to:
Common meanings
* Charles Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and writer, best known as the originator of the theory of biological evolution by natural selection
* Darwin, Northern Territory, a territorial capital city i ...
/
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
and
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
. C-Super-Script (variously, CSS and C^C), a built-in C++-like interpreted scripting language, allows access to virtually all simulator objects and can initiate all the same actions as the
GUI, and more. Version 4 and upward features a full 3D environment for visualizations, based on
Qt and
Open Inventor. Robotics simulations are made possible by integration with the
Open Dynamics Engine. A plugin system allows for expanding the software in many ways. Version 5 introduced parallel threading support, numerous speed improvements, a help browser featuring an interface to the project's Wiki and auto-generated documentation, undo and redo using diffs and a definable undo depth. In addition, 5.0.2 introduced a built-in plugin
source code editor, and plugins can now be compiled from the main interface, enabling full development of plugins within Emergent.
Emergent also provides an implementation of
Leabra Leabra stands for local, error-driven and associative, biologically realistic algorithm. It is a model of learning which is a balance between Hebbian and error-driven learning with other network-derived characteristics. This model is used to m ...
which was developed by
Randall C. O'Reilly
Randall Charles O'Reilly (born March 1, 1967) is a professor of psychology and computer science at the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis. His lab moved to UC Davis from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2019.
E ...
in his PhD thesis.
See also
*
David Rumelhart
*
Randall C. O'Reilly
Randall Charles O'Reilly (born March 1, 1967) is a professor of psychology and computer science at the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis. His lab moved to UC Davis from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2019.
E ...
*
James McClelland (psychologist)
*
Biologically inspired computing
Bio-inspired computing, short for biologically inspired computing, is a field of study which seeks to solve computer science problems using models of biology. It relates to connectionism, social behavior, and emergence. Within computer science ...
*
Computational neuroscience
Computational neuroscience (also known as theoretical neuroscience or mathematical neuroscience) is a branch of neuroscience which employs mathematical models, computer simulations, theoretical analysis and abstractions of the brain to ...
*
Leabra Leabra stands for local, error-driven and associative, biologically realistic algorithm. It is a model of learning which is a balance between Hebbian and error-driven learning with other network-derived characteristics. This model is used to m ...
Bibliography
*
*
References
Neural network software
Science software for macOS
Science software for Windows
Science software for Linux
Free science software
Software that uses Qt
{{Linux-stub