Big picture
Connection backward: Weeks 1–4 gave you cells, neurons, action potentials, and synapses. Week 5 zooms outward to the whole nervous system and asks how scientists study it, then zooms back into the action potential with the squid simulation.
Study it in this order
CNS vs PNS → somatic vs autonomic → sympathetic vs parasympathetic.
Spinal cord → hindbrain → midbrain → forebrain → cortex.
Structure? Connections? Electrical timing? Lesion effect? Blood-flow activity?
Stimulus → membrane potential → Na+ conductance → K+ conductance → refractory period → summation.
Diagrams
Nervous system tree
Research methods quick map
Histology · CT · MRI
Tracers · DTI
Single unit · EEG · ERP
PET · fMRI/BOLD
Temporal resolution = WHEN. Spatial resolution = WHERE. No one method does everything.
Squid action-potential story
Teach me — one step at a time
Open one step, learn it, close it, and say it back before moving on.
Professor Slides + Textbook → Course Material
This section keeps the Week 5 textbook and both professor slide decks tied together instead of treating them as separate piles of information.
CNS vs PNS → somatic vs autonomic → sympathetic vs parasympathetic. Textbook pp. 68–72 and the professor’s Nervous System Structure slides reinforce the same map.
Spinal cord → hindbrain → midbrain → forebrain → cerebral cortex. Use the textbook figures to locate structures and the slides to lock in the professor’s emphasized functions.
Textbook pp. 82–90 adds cortical layers/columns, lobes, motor and somatosensory maps, prefrontal cortex, working memory, and the binding problem.
The Research Methods slides organize the toolbox: anatomy/stains/tracers → electrical methods → lesion methods → structural imaging → EEG/ERP → PET/fMRI.
Study rule: textbook = depth + figures + page-by-page reading; professor slides = what your professor emphasized. Learn the overlap first, then add the unique details from each source.
Week 5 Textbook · Page-by-Page Highlight Guide
Your assigned pages 68–90 now have a separate guide telling you what to highlight on every page and the short note to write.
Course terms and definitions.
Main idea you actually need to remember.
Important figure, example, or application.
The short note to put in your own notes.
How Week 5 Connects to Weeks 1–4
Big idea: Week 5 does not start a new story. It zooms out from the neuron to the nervous system that contains it, then shows the research tools scientists use to study the same structures and signals you have already learned.
Week 1 gave you the parts: cells, neurons, afferent/efferent direction, CNS/PNS, and basic brain landmarks. Week 5 organizes those pieces into a larger nervous-system map and adds spinal cord, autonomic divisions, hindbrain, midbrain, forebrain, and cortex.
Week 2 showed how DNA → mRNA → protein helps build and regulate the biological system. Week 5 studies the structures produced by that biology at a larger scale: brain regions, cortex, pathways, and their functions.
Week 3 taught resting potential, threshold, Na⁺ and K⁺ movement, the action potential, and refractory periods. The Squid Giant Axon Lab returns directly to that electrical sequence and lets you observe membrane voltage plus Na⁺ and K⁺ conductance.
Week 4 taught synapses, EPSPs/IPSPs, receptors, and summation. Week 5 places those neuron-to-neuron events inside real nervous-system structures and introduces methods such as single-unit recording, EEG/ERP, lesions, PET, and fMRI for studying neural activity and brain function.
Memory line: Weeks 1–4 explain what the nervous system is made of and how neurons communicate. Week 5 shows where that communication happens in the larger system and how scientists study it.
Squid Giant Axon Lab guided build
Red line = artificial stimulus.
Small depolarization can return to rest without an action potential.
Na+ rises first/fast. K+ rises later and closes more slowly.
Absolute = cannot fire; relative = needs stronger depolarization.
The professor tells you to read packet page 1 carefully. Keep temporal summation = same presynaptic source close in time; spatial summation = different presynaptic sources together. The later packet summation exercises are not included in this Week 5 guided lab section.
Source boundary: Squid Lab Packet v6 page 1 + the packet setup/instructions actually demonstrated or explained in the professor Squid Giant Axon Lab Intro transcript. Later packet-only exercises are not used here.
Textbook Practice Questions
These are the actual in-book end-of-module questions from Module 3.1 · p. 81 and Module 3.2 · pp. 89–90. They are kept separate from the generated Week 5 Practice Quiz.
Week 5 Practice Quiz
Randomized questions built only from the Week 5 textbook, professor slides, lab packet, and squid intro transcript.
What Week 5 Is Really About
Week 5 gives you a map and a toolbox. The map organizes CNS/PNS, brain regions, and cortex. The toolbox shows how scientists study structure, connections, electrical timing, lesions, and functional blood-flow signals. The squid lab then reconnects those methods to the action potential and synaptic summation you learned earlier.
Brain/spinal cord vs outside nerves.
Sympathetic mobilizes; parasympathetic restores.
ERP is strong for WHEN; fMRI is stronger for WHERE but delayed.
Na+ first/fast; K+ later/longer.
Temporal = same presynaptic source close in time; spatial = different presynaptic sources together. Kept because the professor explicitly tells you to learn the first-page terms.
Week 3 electrical signal + Week 4 synaptic inputs now sit inside the larger nervous-system map.