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Open-source software for studying neural codes

In this chapter we first outline some of the popular computing environments used for analysing neural data, followed by a brief discussion of 'software carpentry', basic tools and skills from software engineering that can be of great use to computational scientists. We then introduce the concept of open-source software and explain some of its potential benefits for the academic community before giving a brief directory of some freely available open source software packages that address various aspects of the study of neural codes. While there are many commercial offerings that provide similar functionality, we concentrate here on open source packages, which in addition to being available free of charge, also have the source code available for study and modification.