Hi NEST users,

 

I have a pre- and post-synaptic spike train and I want to impose these spike trains onto a plastic synapse to see the weight development.


To this end, I thought of having 2 "parrot_neuron_ps" as pre- and post-synaptic neurons connected with the plastic synapse which uses AMPA receptor.

By doing this, NEST yields the following error: "NESTError: UnknownReceptorType in Connect_g_g_D_D: Receptor type 1 is not available in parrot_neuron_ps." which in my case Receptor type 1 is the AMPA receptor.


At the nest documentation about "parrot_neuron_ps" I found out that I can have the plastic synapse onto port 1 of the postsynaptic parrot neuron

which I hope it will solve the error with the receptor.

From nest documentation -> "Only spikes arriving on connections to port 0 will be repeated. Connections onto port 1 will be accepted, but spikes incoming
through port 1 will be ignored. This allows setting exact pre- and post-synaptic spike times for STDP protocols by connecting
two parrot neurons spiking at desired times by, e.g., a stdp_synapse onto port 1 on the post-synaptic parrot neuron."

My query is, how to connect the 2 neurons using port 1 of the post synaptic neuron ?
If this approach with parrot neurons doesn't seem the right choice, what is the most commonly used approach ? 

Thank you very much,
Kind regards,
Nikolas