Endorsements for Neurons in Action
- “I use Neuron in Action for my undergraduate Biophysical Modeling of Excitable Cells class. The tutorials are so consistent that I don't actually need handouts for my students. The graphic interface is exceptionally well-designed and allows my students to implement and run their own simulations after one session. Thanks Ann and John for sharing this tool with us!”
Sorinel Oprisan
Assistant Professor
Department of Physics and Astronomy
College of Charleston
Charleston, SC - “I based my lecture for the undergraduate Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology class on Neurons in Action and can’t really imagine how people could teach neurophysiology without it! I actually think that no one should be allowed on a patch clamp rig without going through all the tutorials!”
McLean Bolton, PhD
Division of Neurology
Duke University
Durham, NC - “This program is a wonderful tool to bring to life concepts that are difficult to verbally describe. The tutorials can be used in beginner and advanced classes as the student’s understanding develops.”
Lora Becker
Department of Psychology
University of Evansville
Evansville, Indiana - “This simulation-based learning tool is extremely well planned and implemented. The guided tutorials are uniformly excellent with a range of questions, progressively more thought provoking, that lead to discovery.”
John Rinzel
Center for Neural Science
New York University
New York, NY - “Neurons in Action revolutionized my ability to teach membrane excitability to undergraduates (Yale and Bowdoin) both in the classroom and laboratory. In addition to providing well-written tutorials, NIA functions as a self-assessment tool for students when they are asked to predict neuronal responses before running simulations. I also use NIA to demonstrate real world examples of human health problems involving neurotransmission. Furthermore, my students have designed and conducted their own experiments aimed at exploring membrane excitability. The flexibility and creativity that NIA offers to teachers and students is simply unmatched by any other textbook or computer program.”
Jennifer Morgan, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Cell and Molecular Biology
The University of Texas at Austin - “NIA is an excellent pedagogical tool for both the beginning and advanced neurobiology student. It will become the centerpiece of my neuroscience teaching component at Georgetown University.”
Rhonda Dzakpasu
Assistant Professor, Department of Physics
Georgetown University, Washington, DC - “NIA2 is the tool every neurophysiology course should have. It made it really easy to understand key concepts about excitable membranes, the action potential, graded potentials, etc. I recently took a course on cellular neurophysiology, and I wish I could have known about NIA2 then. It would have made the course more enjoyable as I experimented with different parameters to see the effect on the cell preparation being simulated. The tutorials are great. The reference material is good enough to serve as its own textbook and the questions posted at the end of each exercise really emphasize the key concepts.
I especially like that, after the questions are posted, I can verify my knowledge with the right answer and expand even more on that knowledge with further questions and reference material. I am suggesting this tool to my professors at school and have already alerted some students who will soon take a cellular neurophysiology course about using it as a complement to the class. I will also definitely keep my eye on NIA as I become an educator myself. Thanks Ann and John (and Jonathan) for this wonderful tool!”
Ada I. Fraticelli-Torres, M.S.
Ph.D. Student
Ponce School of Medicine
Ponce, Puerto Rico
SPINES 2008 participant - “I very much enjoyed Neurons in Action as the Neurobiology Class textbook last semester. It was a totally different learning experience and I left the class wishing that all the other science classes were taught in the same way.”
Jun Liu
Student, Williams College - “I decided to use Neurons in Action as the text for my upper level Neurobiology course. This commitment forced me to actually load the CD and start my journey. What fun! I quickly realized that I had the power to do experiments that led to more experiments and sometimes questions that I could not easily answer. What more could an experimental scientist wish for! I congratulate you both on one of the best teaching tools available for neuroscience. I also commend you for providing such an interactive tool for an affordable price.”
Steven Zottoli
Williams College, Williamstown, MA - “The simulations are wonderful for giving students a chance to get involved during discussion sections; the minimovies are wonderful during lectures. They are just the right length to illustrate a point, the screens have no distractions, and they are technically foolproof. It was especially fun to ask students what they thought would happen and then use a minimovie to do the experiment.”
Donata Oertel
Department of Physiology
University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI - “I have used Neurons in Action for the past two years in Medical Neurobiology, a course in neuroanatomy and neurophysiology to first year medical students. I am responsible for the section on membrane properties and I have the students for about two weeks. I have found NIA very useful in bringing the material to "life". The feedback has been excellent as the student is able to visualize aspects such as threshold, all-or-none behavior, conduction velocity and the impact of myelin, to name only a few topics. This program has been a huge help to me in teaching medical students.”
Peter MacLeish
Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology
Morehouse School of Medicine - “I have used Neurons in Action in my Neurobiology course (Biology 35). It is unparalleled in letting students explore simulations of physiological properties of excitable cells without programming. I usually devote two lab periods to using Neurons in Action. The particular simulations are very well-chosen, and the implementation in NEURON is excellent. Thanks for making this very useful tool available to the Neuroscience community!”
Stephen George
Biology Department and Neuroscience Program
Amherst College, Amherst MA - “Neurophysiology comes to life with Neurons in Action, from voltage clamp experiments to advanced topics in synaptic integration. Based on NEURON, a powerful simulation program, this is the place to start if you want to follow in the footsteps of Hodgkin, Hodgkin, Katz and Cole and reproduce in vivid detail, then extend, their classic experiments. The intuitive interface and graphical displays provide an intimate view into the secret lives of neurons.”
Terrence J. Sejnowski
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies - “This software is a very helpful contribution, both for teaching and as a tool for research. It is easy to use and explicative, and it will certainly be of value both to instructors and to students as a central part of neuroscience courses.”
Stephen G. Waxman
Yale University School of Medicine - “My colleagues, Richard Payne, Betsy Quinlan and I have used Neurons in Action in our upper level Neurophysiology class since it came out; in fact, we replaced our home- grown NEURON simulations with NIA. The effects of combining a lecture on voltage clamp techniques, and the ionic basis of the action potential, with NIA simulations, done on the student's own time, is truly powerful. In lab, the exercises and simulations are great, with clear results, lots of control of important variables and really useful movies. We run the simulations as 50% of every lab, and we encourage students to do independent lab projects using NIA. The student feedback is also really positive.”
Catherine Carr
University of Maryland