Counting Cards, Sending Signals

This is an activity I created to illustrate the concepts of excitatory/inhibitory stimulation and triggering thresholds using a deck of playing cards. Students form groups of 5: of these 4 students will play the roles of dendrites and one student will be the axon hillock, summing the messages received from the dendrites. The dendrites each receive a handful of face-down playing … Read More

Parts of a Neuron

Parts of a Neuron In order to understand how the ~100 billion neurons in our brains communicate with one another, we first need to know the parts of a neuron and what function each part serves. The Dendrites – Derived from the Greek word for