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!
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)
Aug. 25 and 27, The Passive Isopotential Cell
Chapter 3 Code.
Assignment 1: Class notes, Chapter 2 exercises
1-9. Due in class Thursday, September 3.
Solutions Chapter 2 Code.
Assignment 2: Class notes, Chapter 3, exercises 1,2,5,6,7,8.
Due in class Thursday, September 10.
Solutions Chapter 3 Code.
Sep. 1 and 3, The Active Isopotential Cell
.
Outside Reading: Hodgkin and Huxley
Chapter 4 Code.
Assignment 3: Class notes, Chapter 4 exercises 1,2,3,5,6,7.
Due in class Thursday, September 17.
Solutions Chapter 4 Code.
Sep. 8 and 10, The Quasi-Active Isopotential Cell
Chapter 5 Code.
Assignment 4: Class notes, Chapter 5 exercise 1-7, from
latest pdf. Due in class Thursday, September 24.
Sep. 15 and 17, The Passive Cable
Chapter 6 Code.
Assignment 5: Class notes, Chapter 6 exercises
1-6 and 10-12. Due in class Tuesday, October 6.
Sep. 22, 24 and 29, The Passive Dendritic Tree
Matlab code: bevec.m
befork.m
Assignment 6: Class notes, Chapter 8.
Oct. 1, 6 and 8, The Active Dendritic Tree
Matlab code: heafib.m
hefork.m
heafibA.m
heafibAampa2.m
heafibAampa2nmda.m
Assignment 7: Class notes, Chapter 9.
Oct. 15, 20 and 22: Quantal hypothesis and stochastic models of
synaptic release
Reading: Sects. 11.1-11.7 and Sects. 12.1-12.7.
Assignment 8: Exer. 11.16 and 12.1. Due in class
Thursday, October 22.
Oct. 27 and 29: Spontaneous activity and quantification of
neuronal variability
Reading: Sects. 11.10-11.11 and Chapt. 15.
Assignment 9: Exer. 11.20, 15.1 and 15.2. Due
in class Tuesday, November 3.
Nov. 3: Simplified models of neuronal activity
Reading: Chapt. 10
Assignment 10: Exer. 10.5, 12.2 (reproduce
only Fig. 12.10A; but if you reproduce B you will get extra points)
and 15.4. Due in class Tuesday, November 10.
Nov. 5, 10 and 12: Fourier transforms
Reading: Chapt. 7
Assignment 11: Exer. 7.5, 7.15, 7.16, 7.17, 7.18. Due in class Tuesday, November 17.
Nov. 17: Encoding of stimuli by instantaneous firing
rate
Reading: Sects. 16.4, 16.5, Chapts. 19 and 20
Assignment 11: Exer. 16.6, 16.16 and 20.5. Due in class Tuesday, November 24.