Neuroscience Lecture #1: Neuron physics, electrodynamics, and elementary information processing

This Thursday, 8/11, at 8:00pm, our resident neurobiologist Jonathan Toomim will be giving the first in a series of lectures on neuroscience here at Crash Space. Non-members are welcome.

To be discussed in lecture #1: how neurons use ion channels and the sodium-potassium pump to produce electrical potentials and currents, how action potentials are generated, how information is processed and integrated within a single neuron, and (briefly and hand-wavily) how some phenomena of human psychology resemble the fundamental information processing mechanism of the neuron. This talk would provide a good background and foundation in neuroscience, and would make all other talks make more sense. However, it’s likely to be the most cognitively demanding talk for the audience, and people with weak science backgrounds might get lost a lot.

There will be math. There will be also be heavy usage of terms like capacitance, resistance, electrical potential, and current. If your understanding of those concepts is weak, do not despair: arrive early. A short primer on electricity will be given starting at 7:40pm.