Fall 26' MCDB 194NC, Neural Circuits, T 3-4:50PM

[Biology Undergrad Majors List]

Fall 26' MCDB 194NC 2 units,  Neural Circuits, T 3-4:50PM
Instructor: MCDB Professor Sung Soo Kim
See major sheet for applicability

Audience: This course is aimed at both upper-division undergraduate and graduate students.
This course will cover computational principles of the brain using real biological neural networks as examples.

Examples of potential topics:  turning choice circuit (C. elegans or fruit flies); stomatogastric ganglion (lobsters); eyeblink reflex conditioning in the cerebellum (rats); columnar organization of the neocortex (monkeys); ring attractors in the head direction system (flies, rodents, and fish); spatial processing in vision (V1 simple cell & fly MeTu1 circuit); motion detection circuits (flies); self-organizing map (fly compass neurons); vector computation (fly, mammals); circuit motif of sensory-driven stimulus locating (bottom-up attention in human, fly compass circuit); and finally, feedback motor control (fly’s flight circuit).

Format: Mixture of lectures and student presentations.

Prerequisites:

1. In addition to the intro bio series, upper div students must have studied college-level calculus with a minimum grade of 2.7 (Math 3a, 3b, 34a, 34b, 4a, 6a, or, at the minimum, AP calculus). This course uses differential equations. So, you should have some basic idea about it. (We won't get deep. So, if you have learnt it in the past, it would work. But if you haven't, this course will be challenging.  Instructor approval required via approval code.

2. Upper division neuroscience course with minimum grade 3.0 (MCDB 151, 152, 153, or equivalent).

3. Experience in programming language (the course uses MATLAB, but experience with other languages is fine). The level of experience or the language you know does not matter. But if you have never learned programming, this course will be challenging. You will be good if you understand the materials in the following link: https://matlabacademy.mathworks.com/details/matlab-onramp/gettingstarted

If interested please fill out and submit the following Google form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfbVPzAJTjlj3pwsG2CbENxgi-6fJwemlBkeitUl9os6nhZxA/viewform?usp=header