This project introduces a laboratory component to an existing Neurobiology course and adds computer capability to promote independent student projects in a current Animal Physiology course. The equipment added includes Macintosh IIsi computers, a data acquisition and analysis system (MacLab), and supporting hardware and software. The Neurobiology course focuses on the medicinal leech and covers such techniques as intracellular recording with microelectrodes, voltage clamp measurements of ionic currents, and computer-assisted data acquisition and analysis. Equipment includes anti-vibration tabletops, Leitz and Huxley micromanipulator, A-M Systems intracellular amplifiers, an Axoclamp voltage clamp amplifier, and a Flaming- Brown microelectrode puller. In both laboratories students, working in teams of three, first learn a basic technique or principle and then formulate and test their own related hypothesis either by designing a mini-independent research project or redesigning the parameters for the basic laboratory.
