NEUR 415, Theoretical Neuroscience, Fall 2011


Attitude: "Teaching physiology without a mathematical description of the underlying dynamical processes is like teaching planetary motion to physicists without mentioning or using Kepler's laws; you can observe that there is a full moon every 28 days, but without Kepler's laws you cannot determine when the next total lunar or solar eclipse will be." (Keener & Sneyd)

Code for ALL figures and nondaggered exercises.

Lectures 1-14

Goal: Achieve a quantitative understanding of this cartoon. For a glimpse of the missing anatomical detail please view figure 2 in this paper and note that our cortex has 300,000,000 synapses per milligram!

Aug. 23 and 25: The Passive Isopotential Cell
     Assignment 1: Chapter 2, exercises 1-9. Due in class Tuesday, August 30.
     Assignment 2: Chapter 3, exercises 1, 2, 8, 10. Due in class Tuesday, September 6.

Aug. 30 and Sep. 1: The Active Isopotential Cell
     Outside Reading: Hodgkin and Huxley
     Assignment 3: Chapter 4, exercises 1-5 and for extra credit, 6. Due in class Tuesday, September 13.

Sep. 6 and 8: The Quasi-Active Isopotential Cell
     Assignment 4: Chapter 5 exercises 1-5, 11-12. Due in class Tuesday, September 20.

Sep. 13, 15 and 20: The Passive Cable
     Assignment 5: Chapter 6 exercises 1-6 and 10-12. Due in class Tuesday, September 27.

Sep. 22 and 27: The Passive Dendritic Tree
     Assignment 6: Chapter 8 exercises 1,2,4,8. Due in class Thursday, October 6.

Sep. 29, Oct. 4 and 6: The Active Dendritic Tree

Fall Recess: October 10-11

Lectures 15-28

Goal: To bridge between the biophysical properties of single nerve cells, as studied in Lectures 1-14, and the behavior of a whole organism.

Oct. 13, 18 and 20: Synaptic Transmission and Quantal Release
     Sections 1-7 of Chapter 11, and Chapter 12.
     Assignment 8: Chapter 11 exercises 2, 17 and Chapter 12, exercise 1. Due in class Thursday, October 27.

Oct. 25 and 27: Quantification of Spike Train Variability
     Sections 8-11 of Chapter 11, and Chapter 15.
     Assignment 9: Chapter 11 exercise 21 and Chapter 15 exercises 1-3. Due in class Thursday, November 3.

Nov. 1: Reduced Single Neuron Models
    Chapter 10.

Nov. 3: Fourier Series and Transforms
     Reading: Chapter 7.
     Assignment 10: Chapter 12 exercise 2, Chapter 15 exercise 4 and Chapter 7 exercises 5, 15-18. Due in class Thursday, November 10.

Nov. 8: Stochastic Processes
     Chapter 16.

Nov. 10: Natural Light Signals and Phototransduction
     Chapter 19.
     Assignment 11: Chapter 16 exercises 6, 16 and Chapter 19 exercise 1. Images available here. Due in class Thursday, November 17.

Nov. 15: Firing Rate Codes and Early Vision
     Chapter 20.

Nov. 17 and 22: Models of Simple and Complex Cells
     Chapter 21.
    Assignment 12: Chapter 20 exercise 5 and Chapter 21 exercises 7-9. Due in class Thursday, December 1.

Thanksgiving Recess: November 24-25

Nov. 29 and Dec. 1: Relating Neural Responses and Psychophysics
     Sections 1-3 of Chapter 24, and Chapter 25.