JUNE is a publication of Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN) www.funjournal.org ARTICLE Teaching Basic Neurophysiology Using Intact Earthworms

Introductory neurobiology courses face the problem that practical exercises often require expensive equipment, dissections, and a favorable student-instructor ratio. Furthermore, the duration of an experiment might exceed available time or the level of required expertise is too high to successfully complete the experiment. As a result, neurobiological experiments are commonly replaced by models and simulations, or provide only very basic experiments, such as the frog sciatic nerve preparation, which are often time consuming and tedious. Action potential recordings in giant fibers of intact earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris) circumvent many of these problems and result in a nearly 100 % success rate. Originally, these experiments were introduced as classroom exercises by Charles Drewes in 1978 usin