So today starts the first week of “classes” (granted, this being the start of my second year in graduate school I don’t have many classes) and I’ve been trying to make my way through this book. It is quite a dense read. I have problems reading it for too long and find myself taking breaks about every 30 minutes or so. Nonetheless, I find it an important read and I wish to continue throughout the semester and will eventually finish it.

The first chapter starts with the morphology of a neuron, spiking / propagation of an action potential, discussion of spiking thresholds, what makes neurons different, and a little bit about different mathematical tools. The second chapter (were I currently am) talks about the electrical and Nernst potentials at play and how neurons are effected by their dynamics.

I picked up this book and one other book after reading a 2010 paper by Goltsev et all titled “Stochastic cellular automata model of neural networks”. There I was able to recreate the synchronous activity they observed. Interest in this topic brought me to a more recent 2013 paper by Wilten Nicola and Sue Ann Campbell titled “Bifurcations of large networks of two-dimensional integrate and fire neurons”. I never finished this paper, I only found it and skimmed over it.

I think tomorrow a better use of my time will be to start making my way through the 2013 paper and read my book when I stop making progress on the paper (and just repeat this process).