Neurons In Action: Computer Simulations with NeuroLab

is a co-author of NEURON, a powerful simulation environment that models neurons based on the equations that describe their behavior. Using NEURON, Moore and Stuart created the seventeen tutorials that make up Neurons in Action. These tutorials vary in their level of complexity and can be used to teach neurophysiology to students at the undergraduate through graduate level. The first tutorial, The Membrane Tutorial, introduces the student to the excitable neuronal membrane. Students initially inject current into a cell with a plain lipid bilayer membrane and observe the subsequent changes in capacitative current and membrane voltage. Students then add, one-by-one, a sodium potassium pump to create a resting potential across the membrane, leak channels, and finally the Hodgkin-Huxley sodium and potassium channels necessary for an action potential. As each component is added, reference is made to the terms for capacitative current, leak current, and sodium and potassium currents in the Hodgkin-Huxley equation. Thus, by the end of the tutorial, the student has gained not only a basic understanding of the components of an excitable membrane but also a basic grasp of the famous equation that describes the action potential. The tutorials are grouped into three levels. Level 1 includes seven tutorials that explore the ionic mechanisms underlying the resting and action potential, the effects of membrane resistance, capacitance, and axon diameter on passive current flow, and effects of axon diameter and myelination on action potential propagation. These tutorials are excellent for the beginning student in neurophysiology. Most tutorials provide movies of voltage changes along the axon over time. For example in the Partial Demyelination tutorial, students watch an action potential propagate along a myelinated region of an axon and then fail once it reaches the demyelinated region. Several of these tutorials provide insights into clinically important phenomena, information that is often of great interest to students. For example, in the Patch Action Potential Tutorial, students simulate the effects of anesthetics on action potentials. Student test the effects of temperature on the amplitude and duration of action potentials and use this information in the Partial Demyelination Tutorial to explain the effects of an increase in body temperature on action potential propagation in patients with multiple sclerosis. Level II contains five tutorials that focus on the action potential. Most of these tutorials are accessible to the beginning student with some guidance from the instructor. The Voltage Clamp Tutorial takes the students through …