All courses · elective
Neuroscience
A core course for biology majors and premedical students. It starts with the map of the nervous system and how neurons signal, then synapses and plasticity, the senses, movement, homeostasis and emotion, memory and cognition, and ends with neurodegeneration and how modern experiments test what a circuit does. How the brain is built is taught in Developmental Neuroscience.
7 units · 28 lessons
Unit 1 · Neurons and their signals
- Unit 1: Neurons and their signals The Map: How the Nervous System Is Organized Inject a protein tracer into a mouse's blood and, in the cerebral cortex, it goes no farther than the cells lining the capillaries. Why there?
- Unit 1: Neurons and their signals Neurons and Glia at Work Let potassium pile up outside a busy neuron and E_K can move by more than 30 mV. Who cleans it up?
- Unit 1: Neurons and their signals The Resting Membrane and Passive Signals In a resting neuron potassium leaks out and sodium leaks in all the time. Why does the voltage hold still?
- Unit 1: Neurons and their signals The Action Potential and Conduction At the peak of a squid axon's impulse the inside turns positive. What lets charge in faster than it leaks out?
Unit 2 · Synapses and plasticity
- Unit 2: Synapses and plasticity Synaptic Transmission and Quantal Release A resting frog muscle fibre twitches electrically at its endplate with no nerve impulse at all. Those blips are the units of the evoked response at this junction.
- Unit 2: Synapses and plasticity Transmitter Systems and Drugs A drug can occupy 90% of the serotonin transporters in a dish. That still tells you nothing about what causes depression.
- Unit 2: Synapses and plasticity Integration, Inhibition and Neuromodulation An inhibitory input can move the membrane potential by zero millivolts and still stop the cell from firing. How?
- Unit 2: Synapses and plasticity Synaptic Plasticity A few seconds of 100-per-second stimulation made a rabbit's dentate gyrus respond more strongly for 30 minutes to 10 hours. What changed, and where?
Unit 3 · Sensory systems
- Unit 3: Sensory systems Principles of Sensory Coding A heavier weight on a frog's muscle receptor did not make bigger impulses, only more of them. How do identical spikes carry a whole world?
- Unit 3: Sensory systems The Retina A rod in the dark is depolarized and releasing glutamate. A flash of light makes it stop. How does turning a cell off let you see?
- Unit 3: Sensory systems Visual Cortex Cut one optic nerve and one eye goes blind. Cut one optic tract and both eyes lose the same half of the world. Why the difference?
- Unit 3: Sensory systems Hearing and Balance The same kind of cell tells you that a violin is playing an A and that your head is turning left. How does one cell type do both jobs?
- Unit 3: Sensory systems Touch and Pain Capsaicin carries no heat, yet it opens the same channel that heat above about 43 °C opens. What is the skin actually measuring?
- Unit 3: Sensory systems Smell and Taste One mouse olfactory neuron, one receptor gene out of about a thousand. One bitter cell, one job. Why do the two chemical senses code so differently?
Unit 4 · Motor systems
- Unit 4: Motor systems Motor Units, Reflexes and Locomotion Tap the tendon below your kneecap and your leg kicks after a single synapse in the spinal cord. Why only one?
- Unit 4: Motor systems Descending Control and the Basal Ganglia A stroke deep in the left hemisphere weakens the right side. A cut in the right half of the neck weakens the right side too. Why?
- Unit 4: Motor systems The Cerebellum Most of the neurons in one count of the human brain sit in the cerebellum. Damage it and you can still move. What do you lose?
Unit 5 · Homeostasis and affect
- Unit 5: Homeostasis and affect Autonomic Control and the Hypothalamus A thirsty mouse quiets its thirst neurons within a minute of drinking, while its blood is still too salty five minutes later.
- Unit 5: Homeostasis and affect Feeding, Motivation and Reward A well-fed mouse starts eating within minutes when one small group of hypothalamic neurons is switched on with light. What are those neurons for?
- Unit 5: Homeostasis and affect Emotion and Stress A rat freezes to a tone that once came before a shock. Destroy neurons in one small hypothalamic region and it still freezes, but its blood pressure no longer rises.
- Unit 5: Homeostasis and affect Circadian Rhythms and Sleep In dim light on a scheduled 28-hour day, healthy volunteers' internal day averaged 24.18 hours. What brings it back to 24 every day?
Unit 6 · Cognition and learning
- Unit 6: Cognition and learning Memory Systems H.M. got better at mirror drawing over three days and did not remember ever having done it. What kind of memory improved?
- Unit 6: Cognition and learning Plasticity, Networks and Consolidation Shine light on cells tagged during learning in a mouse's hippocampus and it freezes as if afraid. Has anyone found where the memory is stored?
- Unit 6: Cognition and learning Language and Lateralization Language sits on the right side of the brain in about one strong left-hander in four. Why does that not mean most left-handers are right-dominant?
- Unit 6: Cognition and learning Attention, Executive Control and Decisions A parietal neuron's firing climbs toward a fixed level just before a monkey announces its choice. Silence that area and the monkey chooses just as well. What was the neuron doing?
Unit 7 · Evidence and disease
- Unit 7: Evidence and disease When Mature Neurons Fail: Neurodegeneration Lecanemab slowed worsening in early Alzheimer disease by about 27%. The treated group still got worse.
- Unit 7: Evidence and disease Recording Many Neurons: Imaging, Arrays and Atlases A probe with 960 recording sites does not record 960 neurons. What does it record?
- Unit 7: Evidence and disease Designing a Causal Circuit Experiment Light alone changed firing and turning behaviour in mice with no opsin at all. What does your light-on versus light-off comparison actually show?