An Introduction to Neuroscience 080.105 Fall 2011
MWF
11-11:50
Remsen 101
Course Director:
Stewart Hendry 338 Krieger Hall Office Hours: Thursday 11-1; Friday 1-4 6-4583 hendry@jhu.edu
Preamble. Our understanding of the nervous system is impressive. The past two generations of neuroscientists have managed to answer thousands of interesting questions and a few vital ones. Left to your generation, however, is the biggest question of them, the answer to which will be the greatest discovery in the history of humankind – how does the human brain work? Any answer to that question now is either entirely unsatisfying (e.g. we don’t know, really) or completely fabricated. Yet in your lifetimes you will be able to talk about how the brain works in the same way that we now talk about the way the immune system and the gastrointestinal system work. That places a burden on all of you. For some of you the process of discovering how the human brain works will be your life’s effort. Some of you could well be the ones to crack the code of human brain function. Many others will be called upon to treat patients and educate their families based on that knowledge. All of you, as citizens of a nation in which you were born or to which you will emigrate, will need to make decisions from your knowledge of how the human brain works. Let me give you an example: we debate at great length and considerable heat whether intelligence is a matter of genetics or upbringing. Most of the time we say it is both. In thirty years we will know how much of each drives human intelligence, and that is sure to drive public policy. If you intend to participate in that debate you had better understand what has been discovered about the human brain. This course is a beginning to that goal. Class materials. You are given all the material you need to do well on the exams. Powerpoints for all lectures are posted to WebCT – print out those documents, bring them to class, listen to me, take notes and read the assignments in the text and you will know what you need to know. The trick is this – do not fall behind. Do not assume that you can, in a couple nights studying, grasp what I have told you in the past three or four weeks. A decade of teaching students on this campus tells me there is no way you can succeed with that strategy. So come to class, go over each lecture within a day after it is given, go back and look at earlier lectures and read ahead to those yet to come. Those are the tactics you should use in this course. Exams. The course is divided into four sections and an exam is given after every section. I do not give multiple choice, fill in the blank or true-false exams because I suspect, with some
evidence to support me, that you are no longer in high school. Exams in this course will be short answer – I will provide you with many examples. They will demand a large measure of understanding from you. They will not ask you to regurgitate facts – I do not like students puking on my exams. You will not be rewarded for regurgitation and if you insist on writing everything you know about the subject I will draw a red line through it all and ask you, “Which part of this mess is the answer to the question?” I value clarity of thought and brevity in answers. You are not to write essays and I will not grade you on grammar or composition. I want to know if you understand the question and know the answer. You should leave me with no doubt about that. My exams are rolling cumulative. That means I ask questions on the second exam that deal with issues covered not only in the second quarter of the course but also in the first quarter (those things that had been the subject of the first exam). And on the third exam you will see questions that deal with principles you should have learned in the first, second and third quarters. The final exam is clearly cumulative. I do this to avoid what students at the medical school call a “data dump”, by which they mean the wholesale flushing of everything they had learned for a previous exam. I will make clear as we go along what I consider to be the vital principles you will need to carry from one part of the course to the next. You should appreciate this testing strategy punishes anyone who crams for exams and rewards everyone who systematically and consistently prepares for exams. Grading. Each of the exams counts for 25% of your grade. Assigning grades is simple. At the end of the course I will add up the scores to all the exams and determine the top 10% of the class. So if 70 students take the course, I will figure out the top 7. They will get A+’s. The 8th highest score will be assigned the value of 100%. If, for example, the 8th highest score in a class of 70 was 360/400 points I will treat the 360 as a 100% and I will assign all other grades on a strict percentile basis. 90% or above is an A or A-, 80-89% is a B+, B or B-, 70-79% is a C+, C or C-. With the above example of a 360 being the 8th highest score, anyone scoring above a 324 will earn an A or A- and anyone scoring between 288 and 323 will earn a B of some sort. This does two things, closely related – 1) It makes sure that if I go off the deep end and ask an impossibly difficult exam that only a genius or two could pass no one suffers from my mistake; 2) It makes it quite possible that everyone in this class will earn an A of some sort. You are in competition with no one in this course. I encourage all of you to help one another during all hours of the semester EXCEPT for exam time. Ethics. Policy on academic dishonesty – aka cheating – is simple. If I suspect you of cheating I will send you to Dean Dorothy Shepard and I will press to give you an F in the course. Cheating is bad if for no other reason than it shows a fundamental lack of respect for the University, the Neuroscience Program and me. Do not cheat. Do not think of cheating. Do not dream of cheating. Do not dream of thinking of cheating. I will detect it if you do and I will see that you are punished for it.
SCHEDULE OF LECTURES Aug 29
Division of labor: Organization of the nervous system
A) Neurons and Glia Aug 31
It’s all about shape: What neurons look like
Sept 2
Ions, ions everywhere: The basis for all neuronal activity
Sept 5
Labor Day (no class scheduled)
Sept 7
From analog to digital: Synaptic potentials and action potentials
Sept 9
Keeping neurons safe and happy and fast: The function of glia
Sept 12
Soup or spark? Chemical and electrical signaling in the brain
Sept 14
Talking among themselves: Synaptic transmission
Sept 16
Across the divide: Neurotransmitters and neurotransmitter systems
Sept 19
This is your brain on drugs: Biological basis of neuropharmacology
B) Structure and development Sept 21
Knee-jerk reaction: Simple circuits in the spinal cord
Sept 23
First Exam (Lectures from Aug 29 to Sept 19)
Sept 26
First steps in seeing: More complex circuits in retina
Sept 28
Growing up good: The embryology of the nervous system
Sept 30
To thine own self: Development of neural identity
Oct 3
Mapquest it: Axon pathway finding
Oct 5
Use and lose it anyway: Regressive events in development
Oct 7
First contact: Synapse Formation
Oct 10
Fall Break
Oct 11
Second Exam (Lectures up to Oct 11)
C) Sensory Systems
Oct 12
Old dog and old tricks: Things that all sensory systems do
Oct 14
Where was that? Hearing a sound and figuring out its source
Oct 17
Where you talking to me? The neurobiology of language
Oct 19
From pixels to pictures: Circuits in vision
Oct 21
It’s beautiful: Seeing shapes and colors
Oct 24
Groping in the dark: How we recognize what we feel
Oct 26
Feeling no pain: Analgesics, natural and otherwise
Oct 28
What is that smell? Getting used to an odor
Oct 31
A taste of things to come: The gustatory system
D) Effector Systems Nov 2
The heavy lifting: Motor neurons and the final control of movement
Nov 4
Third Exam (Lectures up to Oct 31)
Nov 7
How to throw a baseball: Motor systems and the control of complex acts
Nov 9
Outside the pyramids: Cerebellum and basal ganglia
Nov 11
Feeling good in the neighborhood: Reward systems of the brain
Nov 14
Falling in love again: The neurobiology of romantic & maternal love
Nov 16
Biggest bang for the buck: The hypothalamus – neuroendocrine
Nov 17
The difference between boys and girls: The sexually dimorphic brain
Nov 21
All in good time: Biological rhythms and sleep
NOV 23 & 27
THANKSGIVING BREAK
Nov 28
Remembrance of things past: Memory and the brain
Nov 30
Direct deposit: Cellular basis of learning and memory
Dec 2
When things go bad: Diseases of the nervous system
Dec 14
9 AM - Noon Final Exam