Credits: 4credits (S/N only)

Prerequisites: dept consent

Time:

Place: Lake Itasca Forestry and Biological Station

The Neuroscience Graduate Program offers a 5-week laboratory course exploring basic neurobiology on the campus of the Lake Itasca Forestry and Biology Station in northern Minnesota.  Each week covers a separate subject and is taught by a veteran team of faculty from the University of Minnesota and an occasional visiting faculty.  Each part of the 4 credit course provides didactic instruction in some area of fundamental neurobiology along with a number of experimental problems for students to solve using modern experimental techniques, equipment and facilities.

The setting for the course, in a pine forest on the shore of Lake Itasca, provides an atmosphere for uninterrupted study and close interaction between faculty and students.  The laboratory building contains 8 fully equipped stations with a capacity for 16 students. The course surveys prominent areas of modern neurobiology including neuron excitability, the function of channels and transmitters, neural development, the behavior of simple neuronal systems and neuron function at the molecular level.  The experimental preparations include the neuromuscular junction, the leech nervous system, the enteric nervous system and various mammalian systems including the rat hippocampus and the intact human nervous system.  These are explored using a variety of experimental techniques that include intracellular and extracellular electrophysiology, pharmacological intervention, immunohistochemistry, fluorescence microscopy, and behavioral analysis.