Endorsements for Neurons in Action

  • "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