TVB — The Virtual Brain
Overview
The Virtual Brain (TVB) is an open-source platform for constructing and simulating personalised whole-brain network models, used across open neuroscience to link individual anatomical connectivity to large-scale brain dynamics and predicted recordings such as EEG, MEG, SEEG, and fMRI. Models are built by placing neural mass models at network nodes connected through a structural connectome reconstructed from diffusion MRI, and the resulting simulations can be compared against a subject’s empirical recordings to interpret mechanisms or plan interventions. Developed by an international consortium based at the Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes in Marseille, Baycrest in Toronto, and the Charité in Berlin, TVB is released under the GPLv3 licence with public code repositories, standalone builds for Linux, Windows, and macOS, a Python programming interface, and a web interface. It is a core component of the EBRAINS simulation ecosystem, where it is distributed alongside processing pipelines, example datasets, and high-performance-computing backends, and it provides the simulation methodology underlying personalised clinical modelling efforts such as the Virtual Epileptic Patient.
Capabilities
TVB generates and visualises connectivity and network dynamics, produces time series of neural activity including local field potentials and firing rates, and forwards these into simulated EEG, MEG, and BOLD signals. It includes time-series and connectivity analysis tools and supports parameter exploration through parallel simulations on a cluster. Co-simulation extensions such as TVB-NEST and TVB-multiscale couple the whole-brain network level to spiking network models for multi-scale simulation, and adaptations such as the Virtual Mouse Brain extend the framework beyond human connectomes.
Connections
- relatedTo: EBRAINS (TVB is distributed and runs as a core simulator within the EBRAINS ecosystem, with prepackaged modules, datasets, and HPC backends)
- relatedTo: Human Brain Project (TVB simulation infrastructure was developed and matured within the Human Brain Project)
Resources
- https://www.thevirtualbrain.org
- https://docs.thevirtualbrain.org (technical documentation)
- https://github.com/the-virtual-brain (source code, GPLv3)
- https://ebrains.eu/data-tools-services/tools/the-virtual-brain (TVB on EBRAINS)
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fninf.2013.00010 (Sanz-Leon et al. 2013, Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, TVB framework)