Neuroscience Course — Full 3-Week Plan · Neural Systems & Animal Behavior

Welcome + why bioelectricity. Start with the reliable Backyard Brains cockroach prep: hear the first action potentials, test touch/pressure responses, and get everyone fluent with SpikerBox setup and notebook observations.

Open with lab notebooks and a quick sensory homunculus exercise, then return to touch-responsive cockroach cells. Students make the experiment quantitative: vary touch force/location/timing, mark stimulus events, count spikes, graph firing rate, and ask how rate coding changes across trials.

Manolo leads human nervous system physiology: sensation, motor output, reflexes, fatigue/modulation, and what recordings can and cannot tell us. End by teeing up Thursday's hypothesis-development discussion and EMG fatigue lab.

Manolo leads a discussion on how to turn observations into testable hypotheses. Students then use a human EMG muscle-fatigue exercise to develop hypotheses, define measurable predictions, and connect recording technique to experimental design. Eve: Grass Appreciation Dinner, 6 PM.

Tim leads more discussion about future project directions, then students broaden their signal toolkit with plant electrophysiology. The day ends by converting Week-1 observations into possible project questions for Week 2 and the final poster session.

Review EEG and plant recordings, ask how spikes produce behavior, and have Alex connect excitatory-neuron thresholds, distance/camera signals, servo output, and body-machine interface examples through SpikerBot/SpikerBit programming.

Tim opens with a lecture on what computation is, then moves into SpikerBot demos: computers as on/off switches, binary and code layers, body signals driving outputs, servo motor angles, and print/debug feedback. A power outage interrupts the hands-on demo work, so this should be read as a started/attempted thread rather than a completed programming block. Include Jack Supple's short Grass speaker slot on butterfly color learning and ventral nerve recordings.

Start with Heather Rhodes, then go to MRC to inspect preparations and turn the visit into project questions. Teacher notes capture nocturnal squid hunting and brain activity, the seawater/tank system, and a sea-cucumber project question: do stressors change body shape, and are there corresponding EMG or spike readings?

Begin with Asha Caslin's short speaker segment. The main block is Tim's SpikerBit coding demo, including the Claw / Dino Jump thread he built with Alex. This demo matters because two student teams later choose SpikerBit-based projects.

Start with Julia Fechner's Grass speaker segment, then shift into project work. Teachers use an interest-based grouping method to split students into teams; five project groups form and begin turning Week-2 questions into feasible poster-session investigations.

Mandë Holford speaks on venom in cephalopods. Students then work in project teams, collecting data and refining protocols around the questions they chose on Friday.

Grass Fellow Gabrielle Bostwick of San Francisco State University discusses Calcium imaging of neural circuit dynamics in albino Euprymna berryi: from transmitters and natural cues to environmental limits. Teams continue a second day of data collection and begin analysis.

Tim gives a five-minute intro to discuss new data collected in Woods Hole, including the Parrot EKG experiment. Students begin making posters while some groups collect additional data.

Spend the first 30 minutes finishing posters. From 3–4 PM, students present on Water Street at Captain Kidd, the Community Center, and adjacent buildings, with 100+ visitors from Grass Fellows, kids camps, and the general public. From 4–4:15 PM, students return to the School of Science for parent presentations.