Master of Arts in Museum Science and Management

Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach

Roger Coke Barr

Nerves, the heart, and the brain are electrical. How do these things work? This course presents fundamental principles, described quantitatively.

Syllabus

This syllabus is for the course Bioelectricity, A Quantitative Approach

The course is 8 weeks long. Each week's lectures and questions develop a major theme. The themes have value independently, and---even better--- they lock together in the fashion of a jigsaw puzzle, so that a bigger picture appears as each week is completed and locked into the ones that came before.

Weeks and Themes:

Foundations: including electricity in solutions
Energy: pumps and channels that allow membranes to "charge their batteries" and thereby have a non-zero voltage across their membranes at rest.
Channels: remarkable experimental findings on how membranes allow ions to pass through specialized pores in the membrane wall.
Hodgkin-Huxley model: The Nobel-prize winning set of ideas describing how membranes generate action potentials by sequentially allowing ions of sodium and potassium to flow.
Axial and transmembrane currents within and around the tissue structure: including how these currents are determined by transmembrane voltages from site to site within the tissue, at each moment.
Propagation: How action potentials in one region normally produce action potentials in adjacent regions, so that there is a sequence of action potentials, an excitation wave
Extracellular observations: The basic principles that allow electrically active tissue to produce time-varying voltages between electrodes located far away from the electrical sources, including a little discussion of the sources of the electrocardiogram.
Transmembrane and Field Stimulation to initiate or control excitation: A brief glimpse into the huge world of electrical stimulation and how it works, especially with the stimulus electrodes are both outside the tissue to be stimulated.

Every week you will enjoy the new ideas that are introduced, and you also will enjoy seeing how the new ideas link into the earlier ones.

Weekly Lectures

Each of the 8 weeks includes a number of lecture segments, about 2 hours of material in all, divided into about 12 segments. Students report that they like such a division because it allows them to make profitable use of smaller segments of time. Moreover, when a topic proves elusive at first, it can be viewed a second time.

A pdf file showing a set of slide images is attached to the first lecture of the week. This set of slide images is for all the lectures of the week, including the first lecture and all the others for that week.

Weekly Questions

Each week includes a number of questions. It is common experience that when one works on answering a question one thinks about what is asked in a more intense and probing way. For many students, it will be working on the questions that will give the most reward in terms of understanding, so I hope every student works on the questions to the greatest extent possible.

Within the capabilities of the computer system, it has seemed to be best to call most of the weekly questions "quiz questions" as that category seemed to best provide the capabilities that were needed --- answers checked, multiple tries on similar but not identical questions, and recorded scores. If you would rather think of the questions as homework questions or some other name, please do so. They are there as an aid to learning, and you will see that in some cases ideas are introduced first in the questions, rather than in the video lectures, although mostly the first mention is in the videos.

Most weeks there will be questions asked in a multiple choice format (identified by suffix A, as in quiz1A) and then other questions that ask for mathematical answers (suffix B, such as quiz1B). Every student is well qualified to do the multiple choice questions. The mathematical questions can be figured out by anyone too, but students who have more mathematical experience likely will do them more quickly.

By the end of week 6 you will be asked to submit of a paragraph describing a particular kind of bioelectric signal. The specific text of the assignment is expected to be available at the start of week 5, but essentially the question will ask you to identify one kind of bioelectric signal and tell some things about it. When you see the assignment and know the details, focus on one kind of bioelectric signal that interests you. Then, between week 5 and the end of week 6, please write the paragraph requested, using the kind of signal you find interesting as the subject of your text. In week 7 an assignment will ask you to read and score the submissions of several other students, and make comments. You will find these assignments not too hard and very interesting.

Responses to this assignment will be evaluated by the new peer-assessment method. The core idea is that every student will be asked to write a paragraph. Then, after the closing date for submissions, each student is asked to score the submissions of a few other students to judge if some particular points are included. More details will be forthcoming as week 7 approaches. I think you will like this assignment because it is not hard to do yet very interesting to see the range of topics selecte by other students.

The weekly questions do not reflect all the aspects of the video presentations, so I hope that everyone takes time to listen to the video segments with patience. These videos give a range of perspecitves, facts, and opinions that are easily acquired just by listening and that may not be available from any other source.

Transitions

The transitions from one week to the next are set up in the Coursera system to occur at 3pm Eastern USA time. At that time submissions for the preceding week end and submissions for the following week begin. While older video segments remain available, videos for the next week in the course become available. In the course as a whole, material is organized by week, and the transition for everything is at this one time each week.

This plan has been adopted taking into account the views of students in previous Coursera courses, many of whom wanted to work on assignments on weekends. Making the transition at 3pm Monday Eastern US time allows students around the world to have the full weekend for course work, if their schedule makes their weekend the best time. It also allows the transition to occur during regular business hours for those of us in charge of the course, so that if there are loose ends from the previous weeks or some problems associated with the material for the new week, we know about it during hours when most of the personnel who are part of course management will be available.

Variability of questions

Please be aware that the software for asking questions that is provided by Coursera encourages random selection of questions. Depending on how the question is set up, the randomness may cause changes in individual numbers within questions, parts of questions, or the sequence of questions. Entire questions may be replaced by other questions. That means that when you discuss a question with someone else, it is not meaningful to say "question 4" because that student's question 4 likely is different from your own.

Final Exam

In the latter part of week 8, the final week of the course, there will be the regular week 8 videos and weekly questions. Additionally, some additional questions will become available, and these will be identified as final exam questions. These questions will be taken from earlier assignments, but not necessarily asked in the original order. There will be more restrictive rules regarding final exam questions. More details will become available as week 8 comes closer.

The Forum

Because of the large number of students enrolled, we are not going to be able to respond to questions from individual students. The good side is that Coursera has a sophisticated Forum capability, and we will make full use of it.

Please post your questions, comments, technical issues, or other items in the Forum. Please look around at the various headings and threads and place your comment where others with related interest will see it. Experience has shown that in most cases other students will know the answer to most any situation and respond with good information or advice. In those rare cases where the teaching assistants or instructor feels a further response is needed, we will respond publically. The response may be in the section of the forum reserved for us, though if urgent or major issues arise, they may be covered in an email. Items that carry forward from one week to the next may become a topic in the weekly announcements.

The forum also allows and encourages social interactions among students. Please introduce yourself and participate further as best suits your situation. We will leave what happens here mostly up to you, the students in the course, knowing that in other courses student social interaction has been extensive, friendly, and positive. Please be mindful that students come from many different places, geographically and culturally, and do your best to address others politely and with respect.

Discussion of quiz questions on the forum

It is fine to discuss the quiz questions on the forum as far as the underlying ideas, links or references, and in general how to go about answer the questions. However, please do not give specific answers. For example, do not say "the answer to number 3 is 77." If you do that, it takes away the thrill of discovery from another student. More seriously, giving specific answers is a breech of the ethical code for the students in the class.

Reference text

This course is loosely based on the textbook Bioelectricity, A Quantitative Approach by Robert Ploney and Roger Barr, 3rd edition, Springer publishing. The book is available from many booksellers and is in many academic libraries. The course relates to the book in that the weekly themes develop the same major ideas that are developed in the chapters of the text.

The text is more comprehensive and more detailed, especially in terms of the mathematical depth, and also covers additional topics that are not included in the course. In that regard, I like the course better for a newcomer, in that it gets to the main points in a leaner, quicker and more streamlined fasion. Other students who want more depth will prefer the text, because they will prefer the more comprehensive approach.

My intention is for a student to be able to complete this course, including all the questions, without having to have a copy of the book. At the same time, a serious student might llike to have a copy of the book to use as a supplement or as a reference.

Suggestions on doing well in terms of getting a higher score

Every student has a different "best" way of learning, so it is not for me to say what is best for you. If I were doing the questions, however, I would go to the quiz segment first and try an answer before listening to any of the videos. Then I would listen to the videos with my wrong answers in mind, and correct them along the way. If one does quiz first the video second, however, one has to be careful not to become too focused on the questions, as one wants to learn about the whole subject, not simply those few points that come up within a relatively small number of questions.

Special invitation to teachers at all levels

All teachers are enthusiastically welcomed to this course, and especially teachers of high-school students and younger children,. Bioelectricity is important to every one of us --- it is how we as people really sense things, move, and think --- and it is interesting stuff. My grandchildren (and the oldest one is only 4 years old) love knowing how the dots (action potentials) run down and up their arms from their brain to their fingers and back again.

Bioelectricity has for too long been kept in a sort of box of professional secrets, a box where only a few people were allowed to peek in. Let us work together to liberate Bioelectricity from that box. If you can't do that because you are limited by your imagination, just ask a 4-year-old to help you (smile). All of electricity is interesting, in part because it seems mysterious and invisible, and for many of us, bioelectricity is the most interesting kind of electricity of them all.

Thank you for joining the course

As you know, this course is part of a grand experiment. No doubt things will evolve and improve in ways we do not yet imagine. Nonetheless it is fun to be a part of something at the beginning, as is true for both you and me. Thank you for participating. Let us do our best together to make the experience both productive and enjoyable.

..rcb

Schedule

Tabular view of schedule (pdf)

http://spark-public.s3.amazonaws.com/bioelectricity/resources/bioelectricity_schedule.pdf

Week 1

Dates and Times: Monday (M) 9/24/2012, 9:00 am – Monday (M) 10/1/2012, 3:00 pm Eastern time (ET)

Topic: Electricity in Solutions