NEUR 2200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Neocortex, Voltmeter

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Neuroscience
• Course: NEUR 2200
• Professor: Matthew Holahan

Document Summary

Electrical potential: charge through a neuron measured in voltage. Galvani: noticed that electrical current caused nerves to twitch due to electricity flowing along the nerves. Fritsch & hitzig: caused electrical stimulation of neocortex which caused the arms and legs of dogs to move. Penfield: used electrical stimulation to map to neocortex. He did this by probing the mind of a woman with seizures with an electrode. This woman reported smelling burnt toast directly before each seizure. She was keep awake during the operations, when she indicated that she could smell the toast, penfield knew that this was the area of the brain causing the seizures. Voltmeter: used for electrical recording, measures the difference in electrical potential from inside and outside of the cell. Hogkins & huxkley: used a squid neuron which is much large then our own to understand the relationship between current (i) and voltage.