NRSC4485 - Nerve and Muscle in Health and Disease

In this seminar course, we will deepen our understanding about excitability in the nervous system and in skeletal and cardiac muscle. A particular focus of the course will be the roles which calcium ions play as second messengers in nerve, muscle and synapse. We will study disease processes involving excitability and calcium handling, such as Long QT syndrome and hyperkalemic periodic paralysis. The later part of the course will have a journal club format, based on the reading and presentation of original papers, including papers about non-opioid analgesia and malignant hyperthermia. We will learn about the techniques used to study intracellular calcium and about how calcium is handled in nerve and muscle. Classical, physiological experiments will be interpreted in terms of modern molecular knowledge.