Undergraduate Neuroscience Major: Behavioral Control Systems: CBNS/PSYC 127

Behavioral Control Systems: CBNS/PSYC 127

Muybridge pyloric

Behavioral Control Systems - CBNS/PSYC 127

Lecture: Watkins 1101, TR, 11:10 am - 12:30 pm, 4 cr.
Prof. Scott Currie, Office: Spieth 2380, Tel: 827-2411
Go to Scott Currie's Neuroscience Faculty page
Office hours: S.C. - TR 3:30- 4:30 pm

T.A.: Kurt Spurgin

NEUROSCIENCE & NEUROTECHNOLOGY IN THE NEWS

There is no textbook. Instead, there are Readings available under "Course Materials" on iLearn.

"Swiftly the head-mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of sub-patterns. Now as the waking body rouses, subpatterns of this great harmony of activity stretch down into the unlit tracks of the stalk-piece of the scheme. Strings of flashing and travelling sparks engage the lengths of it. This means that the body is up and rises to meet its waking day."

- Sir Charles Sherrington, Man On His Nature, The Gifford Lectures, 1941 (1st edition), pg. 225.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Have you allowed yourself to wonder lately? There are certain dividends from dwelling now and then on the incredible achievements of the nervous system. Is a sonnet the most adequate stimulus for you? Or a piano concerto? Among infra-human forms, is the circling hawk, or the bat flying in the woods, or the contemplation of 10¹⁰ neurons each receiving ordered arrays of impulses from many others, the most adequate stimulus to excite your sense of wonder? I would like to lift up several conclusions from such contemplation. For one, we cannot wait for a stepwise unravelling, up from the molecule; simultaneous attack on all levels is called for. More than anywhere else, we can expect emergents in neurobiology - new principles of operation that cannot be predicted from our incomplete knowledge of lower levels. If greater complexity, more levels and more intricate achievements are likely to conceal new basic principles of system function, there should be more basic discoveries awaiting the explorer of the behaviour machinery than in any other field of knowledge."

- Theodore Bullock, Strategies for blind physiologists with elephantine problems, S.E.B. Symposia, 1966, v.20.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms … Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance."

- Virginia Woolf, Modern fiction. In: The Common Reader, First Series. London: Hogarth Press; 1957 [1925]. p. 189-90.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.”

- Alan Turing, British mathematician, WWII code-breaker and founder of computer science, 1943. Turing was eating lunch in the ATT Bell Labs cafeteria in New York, seated amongst ATT junior executives, when he made this loud pronouncement (from Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Tell me where is Fancy bred,

Or in the heart or in the head?

How begot, how nourishèd?

Reply, reply.

It is engender'd in the eyes,

With gazing fed; and Fancy dies

In the cradle where it lies."

- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 2.

GRADING

Quizzes (20%, weekly in Discussion, beginning on the 1st week)
Midterm (35%, April 28, covering weeks 1-5 lectures & readings #1 - 9)
Final Exam (45%, June 8, cumulative)

WEEK	TOPIC	READINGS
1	Neuroethology of Motor Systems: goals and experimental strategies Command Neurons and Command Systems - Mauthner neurons and Startle Behavior in Fish Web Links: - Theodore Bullock - The Goals of Neuroethology (1990) (PDF file download) - Theodore Bullock biography	Readings #1, 2
2	Command Neurons and Command Systems (cont') Mauthner neurons and Startle Behavior in Fish Command Systems for locomotion Web Links: - Joe Fetcho's zebrafish lab - Sten Grillner - Neural networks for vertebrate locomotion (PDF file download) Movies: - Zebrafish Mauthner cells & startle behavior (from Dr. Joe Fetcho's lab)	Readings #2, 3
3	Spinal Cord Reflexes and Motor Patterns Web Links: - Spinal motor structures - Sir Charles Sherrington - Nobel Lecture, 1932	Reading #4
4	Central Pattern Generators (CPGs): - Locust flight and the modern CPG concept - “Building blocks” of pattern generating networks - Clione swimming: a simple CPG Web Links: - Don Wilson biography - Yuri Arshavsky - Richard Satterlie Movies: - Clione swimming (2.66 MB) - Clione swimming and hunting (large lengthy files, ~80 MB)	Readings #5, 6
4	Neuromodulation of multifunctional networks - the crustacean stomatogastric (STG) nervous system Web Links: - Dan Hartline's STG web page - H.-G. Heinzel's STG web page	Readings #7, 8
5	Simple vertebrate model systems for locomotion - frog embryo (tadpole) & lamprey Web Links: - Alan Roberts - Xenopus tadpole research - Sten Grillner - Neural networks for vertebrate (lamprey) locomotion (PDF file download)	Reading #9
May 2	[Midterm Exam, Thursday May 2]
6	Artificial neural networks and computer simulation Web Links: - Alan Turing homepage - Neural networks (on MIT CogNet) - The TinkerToy computer - What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain	Reading #10
7	Development of Behavior - innate development (fixed action patterns, chick limb movements) Web Links: - Konrad Lorenz & Niko Tinbergen - Viktor Hamburger obituary 2001 (by Dale Purves) Movies: - Egg rolling "fixed action pattern" in goose - Chick hatching	Reading #11
8	Development of Behavior (continued) - innate development (chick limb movements, continued) - experience-mediated development (imprinting) - mixed innate / experience-mediated development (birdsong) Web Links: - BirdSongs webpage - Download Raven sound-analysis software	Reading #11
9	Cortical control of voluntary movement - descending pathways - cortical "neuronal population vectors" Web Links: - Apostolos Georgopoulos' Lab - The little man inside your brain (NPR radio)	Reading #12
10	Motor learning and "automaticity" - How do memorized skilled movements become automatic? The emerging hybrid brain-machine technology Web Links: - Mind over matter - John Chapin's Lab - Miguel Nicolelis' Lab - Andrew Schwartz's Lab - BrainGate gives paralysed the power of mind control - Looking through cats' eyes	Readings #13, 14
June 14	[Final Exam, Friday June 14, 11:30 am - 2:30 pm]

NRSC/PSYC 127 Reading List:

(Available to enrolled students on the iLearn course website.)

1. Young, D. (1989) Introduction, Ch. 1 and Nerve Cells, Ch. 2. In: Nerve Cells and Animal Behaviour. Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, NY.

2. Young, D. (1989) Startle Behaviour, Ch. 6., pp. 125-6, 143-55. In: Nerve Cells and Animal Behaviour. Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, NY.

3. Pearson, K.G. (1976) The control of walking. Sci. Am. 235 (6): 72-87.

4. Kandel, E.R., Schwartz, J.H. and Jessell, T.M. (1995) Spinal reflexes, Ch. 28. In: Essentials of Neural Science and Behavior. Appleton and Lange, Norwalk, CT.

5. Wilson, D.M. (1968) The flight-control system of the locust. Scientific Amer. 218(5): 83-90. -and- Delcomyn, F. (1980) Neural basis of rhythmic behavior in animals. Science 210: 492-498.

6. Getting, P.A. (1985) Hypotheses for mechanisms of pattern generation derived from studies of small systems. In: Motor Control: From Movement Trajectories to Neural Mechanisms. 1985 Short Course 2 Syllabus. Paul S.G. Stein, Organizer. Soc. for Neuroscience, Washington, pp. 67-80.

7. Levitan, I.B. and Kaczmarek, L.K. (1991) Neural networks and behavior, Ch. 16. In: The Neuron, Oxford Univ. Press, New York, NY.

8. Harris-Warrick, R.M. and Flamm, R.E. (1986) Chemical modulation of a small central pattern generator circuit. Trends Neurosci. 9: 432-437. -and- Simmers, J., Meyrand, P. and Moulins, M. (1995) Dynamic Networks of Neurons. American Scientist 83(3): 262-268.

9. Zupanc, G.K.H. (2004) Neuronal control of motor output: swimming in toad tadpoles, Ch. 5. In: Behavioral Neurobiology: An Integrative Approach, Oxford Univ. Press, New York, NY. -and- Grillner, S. (2003) The motor infrastructure: From ion channels to neuronal networks. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience 4: 573-586.

10. Perkel, D.H. (1988) Logical neurons: the enigmatic legacy of Warren McCulloch. TINS 11: 9-12. -and- Kandel, E.R., Schwartz, J.H. and Jessell, T.M. (1995) Cognitive functions can now be simulated by artificial neural networks that employ parallel distributed processing, Ch. 19. In: Essentials of Neural Science and Behavior. Appleton and Lange, Norwalk, CT, pp. 359-363.

11. Purves, D. and Lichtman, J.T. (1985) The development of behavior, Ch. 14. In: Principles of Neural Development. Sinauer Assoc., New York, NY.

12. Ghez, C. (1991) Voluntary movment, Ch. 40. In: Principles of Neural Science, 3rd Edition (E.R. Kandel, J.H. Schwartz, and T.M. Jessell, eds.) Elsevier, New York, NY, pp. 609-625. -and- printouts of 2 websites: Mind over matter, and Dr. John Chapin's Lab.

13. Ungerleider, L.G., Doyon, J. and Karni, A. (2002) Imaging brain plasticity during motor skill learning. Neurobiol. Learning Mem. 78: 553-564. -and- Noam, N.E. and Ahissar, E. (2009) New tricks and old spines. (Commentary) Nature 462: 859-861.

14. Cobb, K. (2005) The dawn of brain-machine interfaces. Biomedical Computation Review (Fall issue) 1(2): 14-21. -and- Harris, P. (2011) BrainGate gives paralyzed the power of mind control. Guardian.co.uk / TheObserver, April 17, 2011. -and- Fetz, E.E. (1999) Real-time control of a robotic arm by neuronal ensembles. Nature Neuroscience (News and Views) 2(7): 583-584. -and- Whitehouse, D. (1999) Looking through cats' eyes. BBC News online. news.bbc.co.uk, October 11, 1999 (including 1st page of Yang Dan's Journal of Neuroscience article).

Miscellaneous Additional Readings For Those Interested:

Arbib, Michael A. (2000) Warren McCulloch's Search for the Logic of the Nervous System. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 43.2: 193-216.

Smalheiser, Neil R. (2000) Walter Pitts. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 43.2: 217-226.

Turing, Alan M. (1950) Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind 59: 433-460.

Movies

Other Web Sites of Interest

Cortical Control of Voluntary Movement

John Chapin [rat brain-machine interface]
Apostolos Georgopoulos [cortical neuronal population vectors]
Miguel Nicolelis [primate brain-machine interface]
Andrew Schwartz [primate brain-machine interface]

Undergraduate Neuroscience Major

Behavioral Control Systems: CBNS/PSYC 127

Main Navigation

Current page is: Neuro 127

Behavioral Control Systems - CBNS/PSYC 127

Lecture: Watkins 1101, TR, 11:10 am - 12:30 pm, 4 cr.
Prof. Scott Currie, Office: Spieth 2380, Tel: 827-2411
Go to Scott Currie's Neuroscience Faculty page
Office hours: S.C. - TR 3:30- 4:30 pm

T.A.: Kurt Spurgin