Lectures on Computational Neuroscience

This web version of some introductory lectures on computational neuroscience and biologically realistic neural modeling are derived from lecture notes for an introductory biomedical engineering course at the University of Colorado. The course, Brains, Minds, and Computers is a survey of introductory concepts in neuroscience, neural modeling, and artificial neural networks, for upper division undergraduate and graduate students in Electrical and Computer Engineering. The lectures show example simulations performed with the GENESIS simulator, but are general in nature, and don't require any knowledge of GENESIS.

In these three 70 minute lectures, I used videotapes of tutorial simulations performed with the simulator, which I've replaced with still images and some short video clips in the web version. Students will get the most out of these lectures if they have had a basic introduction to neuron membrane properties and signaling in an introductory neuroscience text similar to the ones in this list. Of course, it is even better if it is possible for the students to interactively run the tutorials themselves. Detailed instructions for using the tutorials are contained within the GENESIS distribution and in The Book of GENESIS: Exploring Realistic Neural Models with the GEneral NEural SImulation System.

Dave Beeman

• Introduction to Computational Neuroscience, and Modeling of Action Potentials
  • Introduction to Computational Neuroscience
  • The Hodgkin-Huxley Model
• Modeling Dendrites and Synapses
  • Passive Propagation in Dendrites: A Digression on Cable Theory
• Modeling More Complex Cells and Networks
  • The Traub Model Hippocampal Pyramidal Cell
  • The Piriform Cortex Simulation

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These tutorials are copyright by David Beeman and licensed under the terms of the GNU General Documentation License. This license permits you to use, copy, distribute, or modify them for use in other courses. However, it also requires you to share your changes and additions with others. See the Copyright and License Information for details. If you are teaching a course that includes a short unit on neural modeling, please feel free to use and adapt these lectures for your own purposes, and please let me know of any useful additions that you make.