Simulation guide

The simulator lives at /sim. This page is a short guide for people who haven’t used it before.

What this simulation is (and isn’t)

This is a geometry-first sandbox for exploring electrode placement in a simplified peripheral nerve cross-section. The “axon sites” are visual sampling points and the stimulation field is a proxy model. The goal is intuition and experimentation, not a validated biophysical model.

Quick start (2 minutes)

1. Open /sim.
2. Click Add intrafascicular to place an electrode.
3. Drag the electrode to move it inside the fascicle.
4. Adjust Stim amplitude, Field falloff, and Threshold and watch recruitment change.
5. Use Reset if things get messy.

Controls glossary

• Axon sites: number of sampling points drawn inside the fascicle (more sites = heavier CPU).
• Stim amplitude: proxy strength used to compute a simple distance-decaying field.
• Field falloff: how quickly the field decays with distance (higher = spreads farther).
• Threshold: proxy cutoff for whether a site is considered “recruited.”

What to try

• Move an electrode from center → edge and see how recruitment changes.
• Hold amplitude fixed and sweep falloff; compare “local” vs “diffuse” activation.
• Increase axon sites until the display starts to slow; note the performance tradeoff.

Where to go next

• Devices catalog: /devices/
• BCI Atlas (companies/labs): /companies/
• Nerve cross-section landing page: /simulations/nerve-cross-section/