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

Welcome + why bioelectricity. Head to the field to catch grasshoppers (easy, no tide), then the SpikerBox: hear your first action potential from the grasshopper leg.

Grasshopper leg: stimulus → response, threshold, adaptation, the startle/escape reflex. Students evoke and record their own spikes. End of class: hand out the journal-club paper to read overnight.

Opens with Manolo's journal-club discussion, then a crab / crustacean behavior lab: walking, claw-waving, sensory cues, rhythms, and neuromodulation. Students add "what could we measure?" questions to the board.

Use grasshoppers / cockroaches for touch, vibration, light, stimulus strength, and adaptation. Students separate technique (getting a clean recording) from experiment (which variable changes the response). Eve: Grass Appreciation Dinner, 6 PM.

Repeat and clean up the best insect/crab observations from the week. Teams do quick notebook checks, "3-before-me" troubleshooting, and convert observations into possible project questions.

Alex gives the opening lecture on using models to understand neural circuits and behavior, with Greg supporting the discussion and connecting it back to Week-1 data. SpikerBot can appear as one example, not the theme of the week.

Start with a fast human EMG side lab so everyone understands electrodes, gain, event markers, and RMS. Then shift the same logic to a walking crab / local land-walking invertebrate: which muscles fire during walking, turning, clawing, or escape?

Use MRC / MBL access if available to compare behavior and muscle activity in a land-walking crab or other local invertebrate. Measure gait, turns, pauses, claw movements, stimulus response, and, if the rig works, EMG during locomotion. Manolo's last day: motor systems + neuromodulation connection.

Stations let students compare animal systems: insect escape/adaptation, crab walking or claw behavior, sensory cues, locomotion EMG if available, and one optional plant/model side station for contrast. The goal is projectable questions, not coverage.

Students pitch ideas from the questions they raised over the first two weeks. Mentors help turn each idea into a measurable animal-behavior investigation with a control, a variable, and a feasible Science Stroll demo.

Teams begin the projects they pitched Friday. The room runs like a small research lab: build, test, troubleshoot, revise, and document. Mentors guide questions toward measurable animal behavior.

Teams keep running their experiment, switching between wet work, video scoring, electrophysiology, and analysis. Teacher fellows practice the "consultant" role: ask what the data show before fixing the setup.

Convert raw observations into evidence: graph one clean result, write a claim-evidence-reasoning statement, and build the public-facing demo or mini-poster. Projects can be messy; the story should be clear.

Teams give short conference-style talks: question, method, one result, what they would do next. Then rehearse the public demo. Confirm who's returning Sat for the Stroll.

Students present their projects to the public alongside BYB demos. Greg, Tim & Alex all on-site through Aug 8; Maribel too.