Neural Pathway Field
A still, grown piece of nervous tissue where thought runs as light. Neurons with tapered dendritic trees and long axons fire when enough signal arrives, sending bright pulses down the branches; your cursor stimulates the cells it passes, and a press sends a chain-reaction wave across the tissue.
This is a viberdy Pro component
The live preview, the props panel and the write-up are open to everyone. The full source, the AI prompt and CLI install are part of Pro.
Every path is a signal.
A still nervous system that lights up wherever you touch it. Brush it to wake a few cells, press to send a wave through.
Props
"use client";
import { useEffect, useRef } from "react";
import type { CSSProperties, ReactNode } from "react";
/**
* NeuralPathwayField: a still, grown piece of nervous tissue behind your hero,
* where thought runs as light. Dozens of neurons are generated once (blue-noise
* placement, tapered dendritic trees, long curving axons that end on other
* neurons' dendrites) and drawn faint, in cool cobalt-grey. Then the signals
* start: each neuron integrates what arrives, fires over a threshold, and sends
* ice-white pulses with luminous tails down its axons; a flash lands on every
* synapse and the next neuron adds it up. The tissue never moves, only the light.
*
* THE CURSOR STIMULATES. Neurons whose branches pass near the pointer charge up,
* so a sweep leaves a trail of cascades firing behind it, and the branches under
* the cursor glow faintly. A press sends a wave: neurons fire outward from it,
* ring by ring, while the tissue is briefly over-excitable, then a global
// ---------------------------------------------------------------
// Full source available with a viberdy Pro subscription.
// https://viberdy.dev/pricing
// ---------------------------------------------------------------
}About this background
Most 'neural' backgrounds are a drifting graph of dots and lines. This one is closer to a histology slide that someone switched on. About fifty neurons are generated once, with blue-noise placement so the cells sit evenly across the frame and keep clear of your copy. Each grows a tapered dendritic tree, branching and curving, and one or two long axons that curve across the frame and end in fine terminal twigs on another cell's dendrites. The tissue draws itself in over the first second, then holds perfectly still, faint and cool, with a second softer layer behind it for depth. Then the signals begin. Every neuron integrates the pulses that reach it, fires over a threshold, flashes, lights its dendrites outward and sends bright pulses with luminous tails down its axons, with a refractory period and a global inhibition so it never strobes. Move the cursor and the cells whose branches it brushes charge up and fire behind it. Press, and a wave of firing runs outward across the whole tissue. Density, activity, cursor reach, pulse speed and parallax depth are all live.
Curator’s note
The growth version of this idea, a slime-mould web, is already in the library. This one is the opposite: the tissue is finished and still, and the only thing that moves is light. It is a small integrate-and-fire network, so the cascades are earned, not animated.
Pairs well with
Matched on shared tags and category — the entries most likely to be used alongside this one.
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