NerveWorks

NerveWorks™ is the first teaching program that allows students to construct their own virtual neurobiology rigs to record from simulated neurons they can build themselves, all with an intuitive drag and drop interface. Developed by a team at the University of Washington and enhanced by SimBiotic Software, the well-crafted NerveWorks goes beyond other neurobiology simulations in facilitating student experimental design and encouraging exploration. Labs cover a wide range of areas within neurophysiology, and are used in both introductory neurobiology classes and to train graduate students.

NerveWorks Pricing*


Full package subscription with CD: $34/student/year
Includes book and CD.
Full package subscription, download from webstore: $27/student/year
Does not include workbooks.
For classes over 25 students that will only be using a few of the NerveWorks™ labs, we can arrange special pricing. Please contact us.
*NOTE: due to price structure differences between NerveWorks and our other products, you can not use the pricing estimator to generate a price quote for a custom collection of these labs.

NerveWorks Labs

NerveWorks: Recording 101
This tutorial lab introduces students to NerveWorks equipment and to intracellular recording techniques. Students are presented with the equipment needed to make an intracellular recording from a cell that fires spontaneous action potentials (an oscilloscope, amplifier, recording and ground electrodes). ... Read more
NerveWorks: Historical Hodgkin Huxley
This is the first of several labs that recreate the famous Hodgkin-Huxley-Katz experiments on squid axons. In this lab you explore how permeability of the cell membrane to ions defines both resting potential and the action potential, within an historical context. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Pay Attention
In this lab you study how the catecholamine norepinephrine modulates the firing properties of hippocampal CA1 neurons (Madison and Nicoll, 1986). In the last part of the lab, you design and carry out experiments to determine norepinephrine's target. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Membrane Challenge
In this lab you explore how two factors affect cell resting potential: selective permeability of the cell membrane to ions and the concentration gradient for the permeant ion, in the simple case of a single permeant ion. The lab has several challenges where you set the membrane potential of the cell to different values by changing these two factors. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Advanced Resting Potential II: Ohmic
In this lab you record from a cell with a resting potential controlled by permeability of the membrane to ions that pass through "ohmic" leak channels. You examine how the cell membrane potential (Vrest) behaves when the membrane is selective for K+, for Na+ or has a mixed permeability to these ions. ... Read more
NerveWorks: LTP (Long-Term Potentiation)
This lab explores the properties of Long-Term Potentiation, and its relation to learning and memory. The lab begins with an overview of LTP and its history. Students then experiment on CA3 pyramidal neuons synapsing on a CA1 neuron. By eliciting spike trains in the presynaptic neuron, they see how LTP can change a subthreshold stimulus into a superthreshold stimulus. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Neural Logic
In this lab you build functioning synapses, the basic signaling units of the nervous system, and construct a sequence of simple multi-cell neural networks that perform some of the basic logical calculations of neural information processing: AND, OR and exclusive-OR (XOR). ... Read more
NerveWorks: Basic Resting Potential
In this lab you explore the basic factors that determine a cell's resting potential. First you record from a cell where only one ion is permeant at rest. You examine the effects of changing the concentration gradient for the permeant ion and use the Nernst equation to predict the effects of these changes on cell resting potential. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Synaptic Challenge
In this lab you record post-synaptic potentials (PSPs) in a target neuron in response to stimulation of two different "simulated" pre-synaptic inputs. Your goal is to determine whether each synaptic input is excitatory or inhibitory. This analysis requires you to understand how the PSP reversal potential determines whether a transmitter is defined as excitatory or inhibitory. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Voltage Clamp Basics
This tutorial teaches you how to use the NerveWorks two electrode voltage clamp and to record currents from cells that contain only leak channels in their membranes. This tutorial is written for students with little voltage clamp recording experience. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Hodgkin Huxley Action Potential
In this lab you repeat some of the key experiments from the 1949 paper of Hodgkin, Huxley, and Katz, showing that that Na+influx creates the depolarizing phase of the action potential and K+efflux the repolarizing phase. You use the intracellular recording technique, solution composition changes and current injection techniques. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Hodgkin Huxley Na Inactivation
In this lab you explore the inactivation properties of Na+channels using the voltage clamp technique. You stimulate from a variety of holding potentials to examine the effects of voltage on the Na channel inactivation using a simple two gate conceptual model of the Na channel (an activation and an inactivation gate). From your data you generate an "h-infinity curve". ... Read more
NerveWorks: Hodgkin Huxley Voltage Clamp
In this lab you use the voltage clamp technique, solution composition changes and drugs to isolate voltage-activated Na+and K+ currents that generate the "typical" Hodgkin Huxley action potential generated by squid giant axon. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Hyperkalemic Muscle
In this lab you use the intracellular recording technique to compare physiology of normal healthy muscle with diseased muscle from a patient with hyperkalemic periodic paralysis (HPP). HPP is a fairly rare inherited muscle disease caused by mutations in the gene that codes for the skeletal muscle voltage-gated Na+ channel (specifically in the pore forming subunit of this channel). ... Read more
NerveWorks: Ca Dependent K AHP
In this lab you use intracellular recording techniques to explore how calcium-activated K+ currents (IK (Ca )) modulate cell firing properties defined by more classic voltage-activated Na+ and K+ currents. You examine a cell's response to stimulation in the presence and absence of drugs that either directly or indirectly block IK(Ca ). ... Read more
NerveWorks: Ca Dependent K ICa Voltage Clamp
This is the second lab examining IK (Ca ). Here, you use the voltage clamp technique in combination with drugs to isolate and characterize two K currents: calcium-activated K+ currents (IK(Ca )) and voltage-gated IK. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Advanced Resting Potential I: GHK
In this exercise, you explore the behavior of a resting neuronal membrane permeable to both K+ and Na+. You determine how the resting potential behaves when either permeability ratios or ion concentrations are changed. This exercise introduces the Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz Equation, which relates Vrest to ion concentrations and permeabilities. ... Read more
NerveWorks: IV Relations
This is an advanced and somewhat difficult lab using the voltage clamp to record Na+ current through voltage-gated Na channels. You generate a Current vs. Voltage (I-V) relation for the Na+ current and explore the factors that determine its U-shape. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Voltage Clamp Hyperkalemic Muscle
This is a second part to the Hyperkalemic Muscle lab where you compare physiology of normal healthy muscle with diseased muscle from a patient with hyperkalemic periodic paralysis (HPP). HPP is a fairly rare inherited muscle disease caused by mutations in the gene that codes for the skeletal muscle voltage-gated Na+ channel (specifically in the pore forming subunit of this channel). ... Read more
NerveWorks: Vent Worm Action Potential
This laboratory is based on a totally fictitious, but plausible scenario. You are on an expedition to study neurons from tubeworms that live near deep sea hydrothermal vents. You should do Part I, Vent Worm Resting Potential lab, before doing this lab. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Vent Worm Resting
This exercise is based on a totally fictitious, but plausible scenario: You retrieve vent worms (Riftia pachyptila) from deep sea hydrothermal vents to study in the laboratory. You record the resting potential of neurons from these animals, a resting potential set by permeability to a single ion. Using ion substitution techniques, you determine the permeant ion at rest. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Passive Properties of Neurons
In this lab you study the passive properties of the neuronal membrane by delivering stimuli to a cell and then modifying its resistance and capacitance to see how these affect its response. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Program Tour
NerveWorks™ Program Tour is a basic introduction to our software for users who are familiar with intracellular recording techniques. If you are not familiar with intracellular recording techniques, please do Recording 101 in the Intracellular Recording Basics folder before doing this lab. ... Read more
NerveWorks: Building Laboratories
Building Labs is a tutorial for teachers and developers that shows you how to build NerveWorks labs from scratch. You are guided through building a recording set-up, making a solution and building a "new" preparation. ... Read more

"My students love this program. They enjoy the feeling of actually doing an experiment, of injecting current into the cell or giving a voltage pulse and seeing the result on the screen of the oscilloscope. There are a lot of computer-based teaching programs for neurophysiology, but this is by far the best."

Dr. Gordon Fain
UCLA

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