A NEST simulation tries to follow the logic of an electrophysiological experiment that takes place inside a computer with the difference, that the neural system to be investigated must be defined by the experimenter.

The neural system is defined by a possibly large number of neurons and their connections.

To manipulate or observe the network dynamics, the experimenter can define so-called devices which represent the various instruments (for measuring and stimulation) found in an experiment.

The following example simulates spiking activity in a sparse random network with recurrent excitation and inhibition[1] The figure shows the spiking activity of 50 neurons as a raster plot.

[8] At the same time, the simulator independent specification language PyNN was developed with support for NEST.