Learn the fundamentals of Bioelectricity from Duke University for free

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

Duke University offers this online course.

About the course:
In this class you will learn how to think about electrically active tissue in terms of individual mechanisms, and you will learn to analyze the mechanisms quantitatively as well as describe them qualitatively.

The course uses many of the same examples used by Hodgkin and Huxley, who won the Nobel Prize for their experimental unraveling of the mechanisms of the nerve axon of the giant squid, and their creation of a mathematical model of membranes and propagation to understand its function.

That work has been the foundational element of most subsequent understandings of electrically active tissue, whether in nerves, the brain or in muscle, including the heart.

• Duration: 6 weeks
• Timings: 6 to 9 hours of work / week

Course Syllabus:
The topics addressed in the course will include:

1. Electricity in living tissue, "animal electricity," Galvani and Volta
2. Voltages, currents and sources in solutions.
3. Electrically active membranes and their resistance and capacitance
4. Diffusion and fields across membranes, Nernst equilibrium
5. Ion channels
6. Action potentials
7. Impulse propagation, current along the fiber
8. Electrical stimulation
9. Extracellular fields 1,2
10. Extracellular wave forms
11. Transmembrane stimulation
12. Field stimulation

To apply, click here.