Introduction to Computational Neuroscience

Psychology 4/503c - Fall 2007

- General Information.

• Syllabus
• Intructor: Jean-Marc Fellous.
  Office Hour: Wed 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm, LSN 384. ( How to get to LSN )
• Notes:
  - There will be no class on Nov 2nd. I will be out of town/email Nov 2-8 included.
  - The final is Monday Dec 10th, 11am (regular room)

- Data and Code (secure, need password)

- Other classes in computational neuroscience

- Readings

Week 1: Introduction to Modeling

(Sejnowski, Koch, Churchland, 1988)

Week 2: Introduction to Neuron

(Hines, Carnevale 2001) (Hines, Carnevale 2000)

Week 3: Sodium, Potassium and the Action Potential

(Hodgkin and Huxley, 1952) (Naundorf et al. 2006)

Week 4: The Current Flora

(Khorkova et al. 2007) (Traub et al. 1991)

Week 5: Morphology and Dendritic Integration

(Rall 2003) (Stuart and Spruston 1998)

Week 6: Midterm and Dendritic Processing

Note: Grad students: papers covered are those from week 3-5 included.
Undergraduate students: papers covered are Traub et al 1991 and Stuart and Spruston 1998.

Week 7: Synaptic transmission. The receptor flora

(Wilson Laurent 2005) (Kuhn et. al. 2004)

Week 8: Realistic synaptic transmission- Short term dynamics

(Abbott Regehr 2000) (Purves et. al. 2004: synapse)

Week 9: Small networks and central pattern generators

(Purvis et al, 2007) (Purves et. al. 2004: movement)

Week 11: Large networks and long term synaptic plasticity

(Purves et al. 2004: plasticity) (Song et. al, 2005)

Week 13: Modeling project presentations (see 'Data and Code' page for powerpoint presentations)

Nadia: Influence of dendritic structure on passive and active properties of somatosensory cortical neurons
Angelique: Modeling bee visual neurons
Aaron: Investigations into determinants of local interneuron firing patterns in the insect antennal lobe
Bethany: L-type Ca2+ spiking in prefrontacl pyramidal neurons
Dave: The effect of carbachol on two currents in a model CA1 cell
Zaneta: The effect of carbachol on the optimal input frequency of hippocampal neurons
JD: Acetylcholine and attractor dynamics in neural networks

Week 14: Final

- The final is comprehensive and will cover all the slides presented in class including the final project presentations of week 13.
- Readings are:

Graduate students: All papers week 3-11 included.
Undergraduate students: Traub et al 1991, Stuart and Spruston 1998, Purvis et al 2007 and the three Purves et al 2004: synapse, movement and plasticity.

- Graduate students: the write up of your project is due the day of the final. 10-15 pages + references. Make sure to divide into: Introduction, Results and Discussion (no 'method' section). Turn in a hard copy, and a zip file containg your code.