Category Archives: Nerves and Synapses
Your Brain: By the Numbers [Video]
Here’s a collection of interesting brain facts from PhD Comics’ YouTube Channel. Could be a useful starter for E5 Human Brain – practice with calculators to convert all the imperial values to metric.
E4: Neurotransmitters and Synapses
Review Nerves content from the Core before completing this topic.
Class presentation:
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Essential Biology E4: Neurotransmitters and Synapses
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The New Science of Addiction: Genetics and The Brain
From Learn.Genetics
Fantastic resources available from Utah, including the mouse party, neuron and synapse animations and an interactive involving pedigree charts and the role of genetics in addiction.
Spend some time here to really read around the subject of drugs and addiction – you’ll be glad you did and it really helps answer the ‘discuss the causes of addiction’ question!
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Drugs and The Brain
Jellinek is a Dutch drugs education website that has some great, accessible resources for neurobiology of drugs and the brain. Animations are available in multiple languages – why can’t more organisations be as internationally-minded as this?
Be patient though -it needs a lot of bandwidth.
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Neurotransmitters and Drugs:
Good powerpoint from HHMI
Excellent overview of effects of drugs (Harvard)
Amphetamines, Cocaine, Nicotine as excitatory psychoactives (McGill ‘The Brain’)
Benzodiazepines, Cannabis, Alcohol as inhibitory psychoactives (McGill ‘The Brain’)
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TOK and Biology: The Nutt-Sack Affair
Leader of advisory panel on drug safety sacked for disagreeing with UK government:
http://www.badscience.net/2009/11/the-nutt-sack-affair-part-493/
Read around the topic, and then answer these questions:
Nutt's Scale of Drugs
- How does this story show the conflict between science and politics?
- What do you feel the respective roles of science and politics should be in the government of a country?
- Suggest reasons why some drugs which are clearly very harmful, such as tobacco and alcohol, are still legal in many countries.
- If you were to form a new country and write a whole new set of drug laws, which would you make illegal or legal and why? Upon which sources of evidence would you rely in order to make your decisions? How would you balance political pressures with scientific evidence?
Find out more about drug laws and the rationale behind them in your own country and the countries you visit or live in.
Remember – regardless of your own opinion on drug laws, if you are caught breaking the law wherever you are, penalties can be very severe.
Medmovie.com – brilliant medical animations
Medmovie is a commercial website, though they have many animations available in their media library samples and interactives, including heart beats, heart attacks, atherosclerosis and more (I can’t link directly to each one – you have to go to the main page first)
They look fantastic – some are .swf and others are .mov, though all the samples can be saved easily in Firefox.
Children’s Hospital Boston – Great Flash apps for students
Thanks to Rod Murphy for this one.
eSchool News featured CHB’s site as site of the week and it’s well deserved. There are some great animations here, including a nice neurons and synapses animation, some stem cell resources, cancer information and a chance to have a go at
making an EM image.
Go have a look!
Jellinek – Drugs and the Brain
Thanks to Roger Allison for pointing out this one.
Jellinek is a Dutch drugs education website that has some great, accessible resources for neurobiology of drugs and the brain. Animations are available in multiple languages.
For more details on the brain, neurobiology and behaviour, see the DP Bio Linklist.
Neurons and Synapses: linklist
Here’s a jazzy introduction from Discovery Channel, with a soundtrack inspired by Tubular Bells:
And now for the serious animations.
Neurons and Action Potentials:
Excellent Flash from Children’s Hosital Boston
Good introduction from Harvard
Excellent comprehensive tutorial (Harvard Outreach)
Another good AP tutorial (can’t be saved) (Jordan Kerr University)
Generating Action Potential (MRothery, Watford Girls’ Grammar)
Comparing continuous and saltatory transmission (Matthews/Neurobiology)
Propagating an AP (McGraw Hill) (More from this source)
Synaptic Transmission:
Nice clear intro (McGraw Hill)
Another clear one (though missing the post-transmission ‘cleanup’) (BishopStopford)
Some Chemsketches of neurotransmitters (Harvey Project)
Neuromuscular Junction:
Neuromuscular junction step-through (Sinauer Associates)
Simple line-drawing animation (Harvey Project)
Muscle Contraction:
Nice animation of sliding filaments (Matthews/Neurobiology)
A good interactive diagram (Thomson/Brooks/Cole)
Neurotransmitters and Drugs:
Excellent, accessible overview from Jellinek, a Dutch drug education website
Good powerpoint from HHMI
Excellent overview of effects of drugs (Harvard)
Amphetamines, Cocaine, Nicotine as excitatory psychoactives (McGill ‘The Brain’)
Benzodiazepines, Cannabis, Alcohol as inhibitory psychoactives (McGill ‘The Brain’)
Parkinson’s Disease:
Short Introduction (from UPenn/ADAM)
Simple interactive – effects of lesions on inhibitory or excitatory ganglia (San Diego State College of Science)
Sample Questions: have a go at these NeuroBioHL_Qs
i-Biology 