Journal of undergraduate neuroscience education : JUNE : a publication of FUN, Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience最新文献

We sought to enrich our neuroscience curriculum by developing a study abroad program that would address curricular goals and requirements at several levels. "Neuroscience and Technology in Germany" was designed to include a diversity of participants, integrate intercultural competence in participants, fulfill university core curriculum requirements, build on the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) foundation of our major, and fulfill major electives. We also hoped that it would serve as a synthetic experience allowing students to integrate foundational coursework with novel ideas and real-world research applications. We developed an itinerary that balanced multiple activities to meet those goals. We included scientific visits, STEM-focused museums, and significant cultural and historical sites. Scientific visits covered a range of topics in the field of neuroscience including cellular and pharmacological neuroscience, development, cognition, mental illness, artificial intelligence, and the mind-body problem. Pre-visit academic activities included review lectures on general topics (e.g., visual system), scaffolded literature reading, and discussion of previous literature from our hosts. Post-visit academic activities integrated previous foundational curriculum with new research. Cultural historical activities encouraged comparison between a student's home culture, predominant North American culture, and German culture. The first iteration was successful academically and logistically. In post-program surveys, 87.5% of students felt the program had met the learning objectives (n=16). Students agreed that scientific visits and preparatory lectures were relevant to the learning objectives, together with several cultural and historical visits. Students responded positively to an outing to the mountains and found a concentration camp memorial visit moving. They nearly universally reported that the program led to their personal growth. Students did not find several guided tours of STEM-related sites were relevant to our learning objectives, and opinions were mixed as to the balance of structured vs. unstructured time, balance of scientific vs. historical/cultural activities, and how to schedule free time. Students asked for more scientific background preparation, so we modified the upcoming iteration to include a "Neuroscience Boot Camp" prior to departure. We also selected guided tours more carefully and modified scheduling according to student feedback.

Over the past 14 years, the Neuroscience Research Opportunities to Increase Diversity (NeuroID) program, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke (NINDS), has played a transformative role in training numerous undergraduate Hispanic students within The University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras (UPR-RP). This innovative Neuroscience-based research training initiative has successfully guided dozens of Hispanic students toward graduate programs in Neuroscience, significantly contributing to the enhancement of diversity within the academic and scientific fields. The achievements of the NeuroID program can be attributed to three key objectives. Firstly, the establishment of a comprehensive and innovative program has provided Hispanic undergraduate students with invaluable insights into various facets of a research career in neuroscience. Secondly, the program has fostered a robust mentorship network that supports selected students throughout their journey to become neuroscientists. Thirdly, it has strengthened the neuroscience network in Puerto Rico by bridging the gap between undergraduate teaching universities and research laboratories in top-tier institutions across the mainland United States.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been a cornerstone of cognitive neuroscience since its invention in the 1990s. The methods that we use for fMRI data analysis allow us to test different theories of the brain, thus different analyses can lead us to different conclusions about how the brain produces cognition. There has been a centuries-long debate about the nature of neural processing, with some theories arguing for functional specialization or localization (e.g., face and scene processing) while other theories suggest that cognition is implemented in distributed representations across many neurons and brain regions. Importantly, these theories have received support via different types of analyses; therefore, having students implement hands-on data analysis to explore the results of different fMRI analyses can allow them to take a firsthand approach to thinking about highly influential theories in cognitive neuroscience. Moreover, these explorations allow students to see that there are not clearcut "right" or "wrong" answers in cognitive neuroscience, rather we effectively instantiate assumptions within our analytical approaches that can lead us to different conclusions. Here, I provide Python code that uses freely available software and data to teach students how to analyze fMRI data using traditional activation analysis and machine-learning-based multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA). Altogether, these resources help teach students about the paramount importance of methodology in shaping our theories of the brain, and I believe they will be helpful for introductory undergraduate courses, graduate-level courses, and as a first analysis for people working in labs that use fMRI.

The Sherlock Holmes (SH) Project is a collaborative problem-solving activity in the form of a murder mystery that is a great resource for upper-level undergraduate courses in neurophysiology that emphasize synaptic transmission and neuromuscular communication. This project, originally described by Adler and Schwartz (2006), has become a central focus of the Neurophysiology course at Allegheny College, along with many complementary activities that work to reinforce the neuroscience material and skills such as creative experimental design and analysis. Active Learning research in advanced levels of undergraduate courses is rare in the pedagogy literature, and this paper adds to that body of research. Formal assessment of the course generally and the SH Project specifically support the hypothesis that the active learning pedagogical strategies employed foster a positive and successful learning environment.

Neuroanatomy education benefits from cadaveric specimens, yet challenges with access, cost, and health concerns exist. Virtual Dissection Tables (VDTs) offer digital alternatives to traditional cadaveric learning. This article evaluates the pedagogical value of VDTs in undergraduate neuroanatomy education. While VDTs, primarily Anatomage, offer interactive 3D cadaveric images and customization options, research on their impact on neuroanatomy learning outcomes remain limited. Existing studies suggest comparable knowledge retention between VDTs and cadaveric learning, with varying effects on student satisfaction. Investigations of non-exam-based neuroanatomy assessments, however, are scarce. This study presents a case study using VDTs as the basis for a neuroscience assignment report, exploring its construction, and evaluating its strengths, and weaknesses through a student survey. Implemented in an advanced neuroscience course, the assignment involves analyzing 3D reconstructed MRI scans of neuropathological conditions displayed on the VDT. The task requires students to collate, analyze, and predict symptoms based on the pathology observed, aligning their findings with neuroscience literature. This innovative approach aims to enhance research and academic writing skills while expanding the use of VDTs beyond traditional assessment formats in neuroscience education. We found that the case-study format benefited students' neuroanatomy learning and application ability. Further studies should be conducted, however, to understand the effect of VDT use on learning outcomes in case study contexts.

Recent efforts to engage postsecondary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students in the rigors of discovery-driven inquiry have centered on the integration of course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) within the biology curricula. While this method of laboratory education is demonstrated to improve students' content knowledge, motivations, affect, and persistence in STEM, CUREs may present as cost- and/or resource-prohibitive. Likewise, not all lecture courses have a concomitant laboratory requirement. With these caveats in mind, we developed the NeuroNotebook intervention, which provided students enrolled in a standalone Developmental Neurobiology course with an immersive, semester-long "dry-lab" experience incorporating many of the same elements as a CURE (e.g., collaboration, use of experimental design skills, troubleshooting, and science communication). Quantitative and qualitative assessment of this intervention revealed positive pre-/post-semester gains in students' content knowledge, attitudes toward the research process, and development of science process skills. Collectively, these data suggest that interventions such as the NeuroNotebook can be an effective alternative to a "wet-lab" experience.

With grant support from the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Awards to Stimulate and Support Undergraduate Research Experiences (ASSURE) program funded by the Department of Defense (DoD) Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), we established a program intended to increase the number of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority (URM) and first-generation undergraduate students successfully applying to neuroscience and other STEM-related graduate programs. The Neuroscience Techniques and Research Training (NeuroSTART) Program aimed to increase the number of undergraduate students from the Memphis area involved in behavioral neuroscience research. In this two-semester program, students completed an empirical research project in a neuroscience lab, received individual mentoring from neuroscience faculty, became part of a STEM network, presented at research conferences, and attended specialized professional development seminars. In two cohorts of 15 students, 4 are PhD students in neuroscience-related programs or in medical school (27%), 4 are employed in neuroscience-related research facilities (27%), 3 are employed as clinical assistants (20%), and 1 is employed in the IT field (7%). The remaining three recently graduated and are planning a gap year prior to applying for admission to graduate/medical school. The Memphis NeuroSTART program has provided valuable training to participants, making them competitive applicants for jobs in the health sciences and for admittance into graduate neuroscience programs. By providing this training to first-generation and URM students, the broader impact of this program was an increase in the diversity of the health sciences workforce, particularly those specializing in neuroscience-related research and treatment.

Engagement activities in large classrooms (>100 students) are difficult due to space constraints, number of participants, and overall noise. Additionally, electrophysiological concepts in foundational neuroscience courses can be confusing and lack excitement. Providing students an opportunity to further engage in the material they are learning and apply their knowledge promotes community in the classroom, a deeper understanding of the topic, and an overall increase in retention. Game-based learning has been used in education across all levels and disciplines to provide students with this opportunity. You're Getting on my Nerves is a board game created to offer students a fun way to learn and apply cable properties of action potential propagation. This game allows students to practice vocabulary terms, apply their knowledge of changes in the cell that impact the speed of an action potential, and develop comradery with their classmates. In this article, we have assessed the board game for its efficacy in teaching concepts of cable properties, its ability to promote engagement in a large classroom, its feasibility and timing with a large class, and its potential to elicit comparable formative assessment scores to students who learned these concepts through didactic lecture. Overall, the board game was feasible for a large class to complete within the class period. The results showed an increase in understanding and retention of the material in addition to preference over didactic lectures with students reporting higher engagement, interaction with their peers, and enjoyment in the activity.

Visual-spatial reasoning has been considered a predictor of performance success in STEM courses, including engineering, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. Little is known, however, about whether visual-spatial ability predicts success for non-STEM students in general education neuroscience courses. In the following study, we investigate how scores on tests of visual-spatial object rotation relate to student performance on illustrative and content exams in a large non-major undergraduate neuropharmacology course. To help students understand content visually, the course provided students with homework assignments that allowed them to create illustrations of lecture content using the online scientific illustration software, BioRender. Findings suggest that percent completion of BioRender assignments was a greater predictor of student performance than tests of innate visual-spatial ability. In addition, we show that visual learning style preference was not correlated with visual-spatial ability, as measured by the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test-Visualization of Rotations. Neither did learning style preference predict student success. The following paper suggests practice illustrating neuroscience concepts, or perhaps content practice in general, had a greater impact on student learning independent of learning style preference or innate visual-spatial ability.