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Neuron Specimen

A textbook nerve cell on a lit microscope slide: dendrites, a cell body with its nucleus and Nissl bodies, a myelinated axon, and terminals.

Playground How to play

Kind: Built from a recipe
Sound: Yes
Licenses: CC0, MIT

How to play

Tap the cell to stimulate it there. In Splash, change the stain or turn Focus.

Its controls

Control	Kind	Range	Start
Fire a spike	Tap
Focus	Slider	0 to 100%	100%
Fire a spike	Button
Stain	List	3 choices	Nissl · cresyl violet

About it

From a concept by Ryan Kamp. A textbook nerve cell on a lit microscope slide: dendrites, a cell body with its nucleus and Nissl bodies, a myelinated axon, and terminals. At full Focus, most screens draw 32,768 splats, low-memory phones 8,192.

A tap is a stimulating electrode: the signal spreads through the dendrites to the cell body, which fires a spike down the axon, node to node. The waveform is the Hodgkin-Huxley squid axon model, slowed; this is a schematic, not a measured neuron. Nissl dyes the Nissl bodies and leaves the axon pale, Golgi turns the neuron black on amber, and H&E shows pink cytoplasm and blue-purple nuclei. Lower Focus: pairs of splats merge into one, keeping mass, center, and covariance, while the slide stays lit. Made by Ryan Kamp, CC0; code MIT.

Sources and credits

Work	By	License
From a concept by Ryan Kamp. Procedural specimen made by Ryan Kamp; CC0. Code: MIT.		CC0, MIT
Hodgkin-Huxley model (1952): squid giant axon; slowed for viewing. Stain colors follow textbook histology. The model is published science, not a licensed asset; the splash's simulation of it is Ryan Kamp's own procedural work.		CC0 1.0