Nervous Systems Project

About the Project

A cross-disciplinary team of researchers from the Universities of York and Ulster are working together on an exciting new EPSRC-funded project, Nervous Systems, to design and use artificial spiking neural networks (SNNs) as embodied electronic nervous system, developing novel nervous system-inspired design methodology and hardware architecture, and applying them to real world tasks including autonomous fault detection and prediction in electronic systems.

In complex living organisms, the nervous system is the part that detects environmental changes and internal anomalies that impact them, by transmitting signals between different parts of the organism. The nervous system works in tandem with the endocrine system, triggering appropriate regulatory or repair responses. In Nervous Systems we envisage a self-aware electronic system with an embedded artificial nervous system that can sense its state and performance, and exploit the structure and computational power of these kinds of bio-inspired mechanisms for autonomous fault tolerance.

We are running an embedded tutorial "Nervous Systems - From Spiking Neural Networks and Reservoir Computing to Neuromorphic Fault-tolerant Hardware" at DATE 2023

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Meet the team and partners

Nervous Systems Team

Contacts

Resources

DATE'23 Tutorial M02 - Nervous Systems

From Spiking Neural Networks and Reservoir Computing to Neuromorphic Fault-tolerant Hardware

Talk 1 - Introduction to SNNs.
Talk 2 - Neuromorphic Hardware Overview.
Talk 3 - Applications of SNNs and Neuromorphic HW.
Talk 4 - Nervous Systems and Microcircuits.

DATE'23 Tutorial - SNNs with Python and Brian2

This tutorial introduces simulation of spiking neural networks (SNNs) using the Brian2 simulator with Python. You will run examples of a small 5-node SNN, which is fully-connected, as well as some SNN microcircuits that were produced in the Nervous Systems project, which are capable of recognising different characters in text. Below are two links, one for the tutorial instructions, and another for the code needed to run the tutorial.
Instructions download.
Code download.

DATE'23 Tutorial - SNNs with VHDL and Xilinx Vivado

This tutorial introduces simulation of spiking neural networks (SNNs) using the Xilinx Vivado simulator with VHDL. You will run examples of a small SNN, which is based on a leaky intergate and fire model implemented in VHDL. You will run examples in simulation, although the SNN model, which was developed as part of the Nervous Systems project, is aimed at FPGA implementation. Below are two links, one for the tutorial instructions, and another for the code needed to run the tutorial.
Instructions download.
Code download.