Cellular Neurobiology

Explore topics from toxicology to neurodegenerative disease, building up knowledge from foundational concepts to ultimately discuss cutting-edge research.

Teacher: Nachum Serota

Description

The page you are currently reading is perpetually sending billions of photons of light to the photoreceptors in the back of your eye. Those photons are converted into millions of tiny electrical signals that your brain integrates to interpret the material on the page as conscious thought, eventually leading up to complicated phenomena such as emotion, action, and imagination.

This course will be a comprehensive analysis of the fundamental concepts in neuroscience. We will primarily be concerned with neuroscience at the cellular level but will progress to studying circuits and complex systems and ultimately discuss how the system can break down, leading to disease.

Tentative list of topics covered

Action potential, neurotransmitters, neuronal imaging, drugs and poisons, motor system, neurodegenerative disease.

For the application...

Prerequisites

Biology at the honors, AP, or IB level; and one year of high school chemistry; or equivalent knowledge.

Relevant experience

Please list any courses, activities or independent study in chemistry, biology, or neuroscience.

Core-specific application question

Virgil Ovid Hawkins is a superhero in the DC comic book universe known as Static. His superpowers revolve around the ability to control electromagnetic fields. He is capable of producing and manipulating electrical phenomena and he uses this incredible gift to thwart crime in his hometown of Dakota.

In no more than 500 words, use your knowledge of science or anything else you deem appropriate to hypothesize an integrative biological mechanism for Static's superpowers.

As one example of a possible starting point, you might borrow via analogy what you know about electrical devices. For instance, many electrical circuits have a power source, wires to transmit charge, and resistors to regulate the flow of electricity.