Of the structure of the neuron, chemistry and action potentials

This week’s lecture covered mainly chapters 3 and 4 from our course book. As it is still the beginning of the course, it feels like everyone is trying to understand exactly how this course looks and feels, what do the quizzes do and how does the puzzle come together – so some part of the lecture was spent to find that out.

It is nice to learn both from a book and in lecture format, as they support each other nicely and with repetition everything always starts to make more sense. The small quiz wasn’t as scary as we first thought and supported the learning as well.

This week also featured an exercise which I believe to be the best learning method. Even though each chapter in the book has review questions in the end, it is largely up to the person themselves and also the moment in time when they are reading the book, whether they actually bother to look up the answers to the questions. For the exercise, however, when you actually have to submit your answers, there is much more motivation to find the right answers, thus learning 🙂

The exercise also included one derivation task. It was very frustrating for me to realize how little I remember about high school chemistry and physics. However, in the end, it all came together and this is an exercise I will certainly remember.

The chapters 4 and 5 we read this week discussed action potential and synapses. The book is very thorough in its approach, which really enables to get to know a lot about the topic at hand. It of course also requires a lot of concentration to understand, especially since it has been a while since I last learned similar things.