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A study led by bioengineering professor Giorgio Ascoli has received $250,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. The project will make use of a massive open-source repository called Hippocampome maintained by Ascoli’s lab. 

Ascoli, along with Gina C. Adam of George Washington University, is applying learning rules to “a full-scale spiking neural network simulation of the CA3-CA1 region [of the brain],” a   states. The simulation will be based on information from Hippocampome. The release further states that the project, called "CRCNS22 Learning Rules in the Hippocampus and their Mapping to Neuromorphic Systems," will enable scientists to estimate “how much of the learning in these neuroanatomically constrained networks is due to dynamic synaptic plasticity and how much is due to fixed neuroanatomy.” 

Incidentally, Ascoli’s lab recently received attention via a highlighting another of its open-source repositories, NeuroMorpho.org. Ascoli says, “The future of neurological research is collaborative, and NeuroMorpho.org is where collaboration happens.”