Week 39
I was actually so excited to go to the live exercise session that I thought it was this week and waited patiently at Deloitte and was wondering why no one was here until I checked MyCourses and realized it’s next week.
I didn’t have time to watch the lecture unfortunately this week, but I think the quiz format was a lot better this time. -Kyösti
I did watch the lecture but missed the quiz unfortunately. But I’m also excited about the live exercise session next week. -Martti
We actually have a question about action potential velocity and axon diameter. We were under the impression that action potential travels at the membrane, not in the cytoplasm of the axon/dendrite. However, when we were researching about why axonal diameter affects action potential velocity, it seemed that the action potential travels not only on the membrane but on the whole cytosol in the axon. Would it be possible to get a clarification on how this works?
Neurotransmitters were mentioned very briefly in some earlier chapters, so we think it was nice to finally learn what actually is going on at synaptic clefts at chapters 5 and 6. Probably the most interesting points are when you get concrete real life examples of how some kind of phenomenon is related to real life, such as inhibition and nerve gas. To be honest, we haven’t been very familiar with neuroscience or biology before this course, so it’s hard to connect these new concepts to something we knew before this course.
Chapter 5 was more difficult than the previous chapters, partly because it’s growing harder to follow the concepts as everything is building on previously learned topics. I think it would be beneficial to stay on one topic for a bit longer so you can digest properly what you have learned. -Kyösti
My problems are that I just don’t have a lot of time for this course (or any courses) right now. I hope there will be some sessions where we can practice and maybe go over some things again so that learning new things after that would be easier. -Martti
I suppose the most important topic for me, that was actually only briefly mentioned, is parkinson’s disease as one of my close relatives suffers from it. It’s interesting to learn more about what’s happening other than just the symptoms. -Kyösti
If you wish to know more about the propagation of action potential, a biophysics book or chapters 8 and 9 of Kandel’s Principles of Neural Science may come handy. The very short answer is that the potential difference caused by the ions passing through a part of a membrane drive a current in the cytosol.