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Video
 Notes
WULFRAM GERSTNER: Welcome to the class on neuronal dynamics.
Neuronal dynamics is part of the larger field of computational
neuroscience. Computational neuroscience works on a theoretical
description of the brain.

Summary
0m 05s

Lecture 1 2 of 14
 Notes
Our brain is organized in different areas. There's an area involved in
visual information processing called the visual cortex. Imagine that
you're riding a bicycle, and at a certain distance, you see a light
switching from red to green. Information about the change of light color
will enter through your eye and go to visual cortex. Now, you have to
decide whether you want to speed up or whether you say, well, it's not
worth doing it. I'm not going to make it. And you continue just as
normal. While you make your decision, different areas of the brain are
involved. Finally, you decide I want to speed up. Your motor cortex
sends out a, command, and your legs move faster. The description on
the level of different brain areas is a rather coarse description. In this
class, we will take a different approach. We will focus on one small
cubic millimeter, say, of brain area. In this little area of a cubic
millimeter, you'll find 10,00 cells or so. And these cells form an intricate
network. The cells involved in information processing in the brain
called the neurons.

Summary
0m 20s

Lecture Videos 1 3 of 14
 Notes
Neurons have different parts. There's a part called the dendrite. This is
where information from other neurons will arrive. The soma is where
the neuron decides whether it's going to send out a signal, or not. And
then this signal travels along the axon to other neurons. Each neuron
makes contact to thousands of other neurons. The contact points are
called the synapses. So the axon will branch out and make different
ramifications. And therefore, we have not just the cells with a cell body,
but we have a lot of wire. In fact, in each small volume of one
millimeter cubed, we will have about 10,000 neurons and several
kilometers of wires. What you see here on the left hand side is a
drawing of Ramon y Cajal, who did this drawing over 100 years ago.
And this gives a glimpse of the intricate network that those neurons
form. However, it's only a glimpse, and it's still a simplification, because
wherever you see empty space here, in fact, there would be other cells,
there would be other neurons, there would be more material. In the end,
the brain consists of a fairly densely packed material. Neurons,
synapses, wires is everywhere. Now, I mentioned already that these
neurons send out signals.

Summary
1m 42s

Lecture 1 4 of 14
 Notes
The signal consists of a short electrical pulse called an action potential
or spike. An action potential has a duration of a few milliseconds. And it
has an amplitude of about 100 millivolt. It's net electrical signal, it's an
electrical pulse. I may ask the question, how this kind of pulse, how this
kind of electrical signal is generated.

Summary
3m 31s

Lecture Videos 1 5 of 14
 Notes
Just as any other cell, neurons are surrounded by a cell membrane. In
the cell membrane, you will find pores. These pores can open and close.
And while the pores are open, ions can flow in and out of the cell. These
ions carry an electrical charge and contribute to the generation of this
electoral pulse of the action potential. Next week, we will develop
models, we will talk about models of this biophysical interaction of
ions, molecules. And these models are called Hodgkin-Huxley type
models, or biophysical models, referring to Hodgkin-Huxley, who got a
Nobel Prize for developing the first mathematical description on the
level of molecules of the neuronal signals. These models a rather
complicated. They describe the biophysics. In the week after week two,
we will try to reduce the complexity of the description. And we'll talk
about simplified model types.

Summary
4m 02s

Lecture 1 6 of 14
 Notes
Now, a particularly simple model is a model where we say, well, we
don't really care about the biophysical mechanisms that contribute to the
formation of an action potential. We just describe the action potential as
a pulse, a standard pulse.

Summary
5m 15s

Lecture Videos 1 7 of 14
 Notes
So suppose a pulse arise from a presynaptic neuron, from a sending
neuron. It arrives, it goes over the synapse, and it causes a response on
the postsynaptic side, on the side of the receiving neuron. The
postsynaptic neuron is the neuron receiving the signal that goes across
the conduct point across the synapse. So this input pulse here will cause
this response over there. Now, this neuron will receive not just one
input, but it will receive input pulses from many different neurons.
Suppose many different pulses arrive. And the effects of all these
different pulses will be added up. So this describes how different
incoming pulses are transformed into a response of the receiving cell.
This response is called the post-synaptic potential. But this does not yet
tell us what makes this cell here decide if it will send out a signal itself,
or not. The formation of a pulse is triggered in this model if this
membrane potential, if this post-synaptic potential reaches a value theta,
a threshold value. At this point, a spike is triggered, an action potential
is sent out. And afterwards, we have some reset of the membrane
potential to a lower value.

Summary
5m 34s

Lecture 1 8 of 14
 Notes
So in this kind of model, which I called integrate-and-fire model, in this
kind of models, spikes are formal events. They are triggered at a
moment when the membrane potential crosses the threshold. And then a
spike is sent out. And after, the spike does some reset and refractoriness.
A simple version of this model will be the topic for today. And then
we'll come back to this model towards the end of this series of lectures.
Suppose now we have this kind of model.

Summary
7m 06s

Lecture Videos 1 9 of 14
 Notes
And our neuron receives many, many spikes from other neurons. To
make things simple, we assume that spike arrival is random. As a result
of this, the potential will fluctuate as a function of time. And only
occasionally a spike is sent out. So spikes are rather rare events,
triggered at a threshold. Below the threshold, in the regime which is
called subthreshold regime, what we observe in the random spike arrival
is a fluctuating membrane potential.

Summary
7m 40s

Lecture 1 10 of 14
 Notes
And this is reminiscent of what one finds if neuronal activity is recorded
with an electrode in an awake mouse, for example. You see these
fluctuations of the membrane potential. And spikes are rare events.
From time to time, a spike is sent out. So in lectures in week five and
six, we'll ask questions, what do these fluctuations mean? Is this noise?
What's the meaning of these action potentials? What's the information
transmitted by the neuron? What is the neural code?

Summary
8m 20s

Lecture Videos 1 11 of 14
 Notes
So overall, I will present this week a first simplified model of a neuron.
Then in the next week, it will go on to Hodgkin-Huxley models, which
we then simplify and reduce to what's called a FitzHugh-Nagumo
model.

Summary
9m 00s

Lecture 1 12 of 14
 Notes
We'll talk about the dendrite. We'll talk about neural coding. We'll talk
about the question of noise, about the question of what is the
information processed and transmitted by a neuron. And in week seven,
in a final lecture, I will put these different things together and show how
to extract from neuronal data a model of a neuron which is able to
describe neural information processing to describe to transform
incoming signal into output spikes and therefore, shed light on the
questions of coding and decoding. After this short introduction, I would
now like you to do a first little exercise. Please take two or three
minutes and answer the following questions. And then I will continue
with a first model.

Summary
9m 18s

Lecture Videos 1 13 of 14
 Notes

Summary
10m 09s

Lecture 1 14 of 14