ScienceThe BestieIntermediate
The Brain's Inner Workings course icon

The Brain's Inner Workings

Like Duolingo, but for The Brain's Inner Workings. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.

21 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free during early access · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Neuron Ned
The Brain's Inner Workings
with Neuron Ned
21
Levels
3
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in The Brain's Inner Workings

  • The sodium-potassium pump maintains the concentration gradients necessary for firing
  • Spatial summation combines simultaneous inputs from different locations
  • Without active pumping, ions leak until the membrane potential reaches zero
  • The axon hillock acts as the integration center for all incoming voltages
  • A neuron at equilibrium cannot generate an action potential
  • Firing only occurs once the cumulative charge crosses the threshold
  • How the electrochemical gradient maintains a dynamic state of readiness
  • The process of signal integration through summation
  • GABA triggers chloride influx to hyperpolarize the cell further below rest
  • Gap junctions use connexon proteins to physically link two cytoplasms
  • Hyperpolarization makes it harder for excitatory signals to reach the threshold
  • Electrical synapses bypass the delay of neurotransmitter release
  • Loss of GABAergic inhibition leads to the synchronized over-firing seen in seizures
  • Chemical synapses allow for more varied and nuanced signal processing
  • The active role of GABA in preventing runaway excitation
  • Distinguishing between chemical synapses and electrical gap junctions
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives The Brain's Inner Workings the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

The Neuron's Ready State

When a neuron combines multiple signals arriving at different dendrites at the same time, what is this called?

Get it right to open this lesson and 20 more in the app.

Course map

Where The Brain's Inner Workings takes you

Move beyond basic anatomy to understand how neural circuits compute information, adapt to experience, and generate complex behaviors.

  1. 1

    Cellular Communication and Plasticity

    • Beyond the Action Potential
    • Mechanisms of Neural Plasticity
  2. 2

    Systems and Sensory Processing

    • Sensory Coding and Perception
    • The Architecture of Movement
  3. 3

    States, Memory, and Control

    • Neuromodulation and Brain State
    • Memory Systems and Consolidation
    • Executive Control and Decision Making

3 sections · 7 units · 21 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Bestie

The Brain's Inner Workings is taught in the The Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

Start free

Start The Brain's Inner Workings today.

Download Tomo, search The Brain's Inner Workings, and play your first lesson in under a minute.