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In this computer lab, we’ll look at open-source data from mouse and human recordings in order to compare cell types from these creatures. We’ll dive into some of the different structures of dendrites, and how these might relate to the shape of their action potentials, and ultimately their role in neural computation.

Before starting this lesson, you should complete the CodeAcademy tutorial for Python3 syntax, or a similar tutorial that covers the basics of variables, print ( ), and arithmetic in Python.

Learning objectives:

• Practice using Jupyter notebooks to run Python code and access the AllenSDK
• Understand the metrics that we can use to compare cell types
• Compare electrophysiological characteristics between humans and mice

In the first part of the lesson, you'll interact with the Allen Institute website to compare different cell types. Then, you'll dive into the data yourself, to compare mouse and human cells.

Steps to completing this lesson

1. Read a bit about where this data comes from, and how we can interact with it

• • About the Allen Institute Cell Types Dataset
• • Computing Basics

2. Follow these instructions to use the Allen's web interface to look at two different cells.

3. Dive into a Jupyter Notebook to analyze data however you'd like!