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Cellular Neurobiology:
Biophysics

Course Director: Ruth Heidelberger, M.D., Ph.D.
Contact Info: tel: 500-5624; office: MSB 7.260

Course Description

This course is a graduate level treatment of the biophysics of nerve cell signaling. The cellular basis of resting, action, and synaptic potentials will be covered with a quantitative, mathematically oriented treatment. The course will also emphasize standard and modern electrophysiological techniques. Equations for ion diffusion, passive electrical flow, equilibrium potentials, action potentials, and synaptic potentials will be derived and their applications to modern neurobiology will be discussed. A similar approach will then be taken with statistical models of ion channel kinetics and the single channel analysis of membrane currents. Synaptic transmission will then be examined, in terms of the cellular properties of transmitter release and in terms of classical mathematical models of transmission. The final section of the course will then deal with the cellular analysis of synaptic plasticity as well as the application of mathematical models to cellular issues. Quantal analysis and its application to the study of plasticity will be emphasized.

The course is intended for students in the Neuroscience program and for other interested students who have taken the Medical Neuroscience course, or the equivalent.

Class discussions will be held using a journal club format. A faculty member will moderate the discussion, and each student should be prepared to discuss salient features of every assigned article. Participation in class discussions will contribute towards a student’s final grade.

This course fulfills the quantitative requirement of the GSBS.

Course Requirements

Students are expected to attend all lectures and class discussions.

Grades will be based on three, non-cumulative exams and participation in class discussions.

Exams will be administered in class. Questions will test basic concepts and the application of these concepts. Test questions may draw from information presented in class and information contained in assigned readings.

Required Textbook

Foundations of Cellular Neurophysiology by Daniel Johnston and Samuel Miao-sin Wu. MIT Press (ISBN 0-262-10053-3). This textbook can be ordered through the UTHSCH Bookstore. Also available at the Baylor College of Medicine Bookstore, Majors Books, or online at Amazon.Com.