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

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.

Neurodiversity is a social justice movement at the nexus of neuroscience, academia, and public policy. A contemporary view of neurodiversity is one that embraces neurological differences, encompassing all "neurotypes," including more specific identifiers like autistic or dyslexic. The goal of this study was to investigate student awareness and perception of neurodiversity since they are the next generation of public policy makers. Students enrolled in Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience (N=146) were exposed to different information sources (popular, academic, TED talk, or choose/find their own) on the topic of neurodiversity. They then wrote a paper where they summarized: a) the information source used, b) their ideas to better support a neurodiverse society, and c) their opinions on aspects of neurodiversity. Several important findings emerged. First, 64% of the sample had never heard of the term neurodiversity; this class was their first exposure to it. Second, students conducting their own searches on neurodiversity had the highest level of optimism (p < 0.05) that society was ready to accept neurodiversity. Students identified even higher rates of receptivity (85%) amongst their friends. Third, student ideas to advance neurodiversity were organized into more salient categories for campuses to consider. Our findings challenge neuroscience programs to consider their role in providing "first exposure" opportunities to students in the diversity, equity, and inclusion realm, especially in areas directly related to our field. We also discuss the growing relevance of neurodiversity in research and academia and offer programming possibilities to enhance neurodiversity awareness and support on college campuses.

Game-based learning is a promising approach that can promote engagement and deep learning of course content in a fun setting. This article describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of a card game designed to help students develop greater familiarity and comfort with complex neuroscience vocabulary. To play Forbidden Neurds, students within a team take turns acting as the Lead Neurd, who must get the team to guess a Neuroscience word without using any of the Forbidden words listed on the card. The game is designed to help students develop a deeper understanding of neuroscience terminology, identify relationships between terms, identify gaps in their understanding, and reinforce learning. The game was evaluated in a 200-level fundamentals of neuroscience course at a small public liberal arts university. Students showed increased content knowledge through pre-post testing, and a post-game self-reported survey showed that playing Forbidden Neurds enabled students to assess, increase, and apply content knowledge. Gameplay also helped students develop greater communication, critical thinking, and teamwork skills. In addition, students reported experiencing greater engagement through this fun learning activity. This game could act as an adaptable and effective learning tool across a range of neuroscience courses.

Electroencephalography (EEG) has given rise to a myriad of new discoveries over the last 90 years. EEG is a noninvasive technique that has revealed insights into the spatial and temporal processing of brain activity over many neuroscience disciplines, including sensory, motor, sleep, and memory formation. Most undergraduate students, however, lack laboratory access to EEG recording equipment or the skills to perform an experiment independently. Here, we provide easy-to-follow instructions to measure both wave and event-related EEG potentials using a portable, low-cost amplifier (Backyard Brains, Ann Arbor, MI) that connects to smartphones and PCs, independent of their operating system. Using open-source software (SpikeRecorder) and analysis tools (Python, Google Colaboratory), we demonstrate tractable and robust laboratory exercises for students to gain insights into the scientific method and discover multidisciplinary neuroscience research. We developed 2 laboratory exercises and ran them on participants within our research lab (N = 17, development group). In our first protocol, we analyzed power differences in the alpha band (8-13 Hz) when participants alternated between eyes open and eyes closed states (n = 137 transitions). We could robustly see an increase of over 50% in 59 (43%) of our sessions, suggesting this would make a reliable introductory experiment. Next, we describe an exercise that uses a SpikerBox to evoke an event-related potential (ERP) during an auditory oddball task. This experiment measures the average EEG potential elicited during an auditory presentation of either a highly predictable ("standard") or low-probability ("oddball") tone. Across all sessions in the development group (n=81), we found that 64% (n=52) showed a significant peak in the standard response window for P300 with an average peak latency of 442ms. Finally, we tested the auditory oddball task in a university classroom setting. In 66% of the sessions (n=30), a clear P300 was shown, and these signals were significantly above chance when compared to a Monte Carlo simulation. These laboratory exercises cover the two methods of analysis (frequency power and ERP), which are routinely used in neurology diagnostics, brain-machine interfaces, and neurofeedback therapy. Arming students with these methods and analysis techniques will enable them to investigate this laboratory exercise's variants or test their own hypotheses.

Stringent animal welfare principles are forcing undergraduate instructors to avoid the use of animals. Therefore, many hands-on lab sessions using laboratory animals are progressively replaced by computer simulations. These versatile software simulations permit the observation of the behavior of biological systems under a great variety of experimental conditions. While this versatility is important, computer simulations often work even when a student makes wrong assumptions, a situation that poses its own pedagogical problem. Hands-on learning provides pupils with the opportunity to safely make mistakes and learn organically through trial and error and should therefore still be promoted. We propose an electronic model of an excitable cell composed of different modules representing different parts of a neuron - dendrites, soma, axon and node of Ranvier. We describe a series of experiments that allow students to better understand differences between passive and active cell responses and differences between myelinated and demyelinated axons. These circuits can also be used to demonstrate temporal and spatial summation of signals coming to the neuron via dendrites, as well as the neuron coding by firing frequency. Finally, they permit experimental determination along with theoretical calculations of important biophysical properties of excitable cells, such as rheobase, chronaxie and space constant. This open-source model has been successfully integrated into an undergraduate course of the physiology of excitable cells and student feedback assessment reveals that it helped students to understand important notions of the course. Thus, this neuromorphic circuit could be a valuable tool for biophysics and neuroscience courses in other universities.

Chatbots and related technologies are predicted to become fixtures in our teaching. These tools scan information from the web or other sources and deliver content in textual summaries. ChatGPT4 and other AI products are surprisingly good at summaries of information and simple analysis, similar to what we often ask students to do as part of our teaching. They are poor at evaluation of information and citation of sources at the moment, but these tools are advancing rapidly. Use of these tools in the classroom generate important questions about how we handle content, understanding and skill development in the classroom, how information is curated, and the structure of information in our discipline. Additionally, accessibility of these tools will be an issue moving forward since they have the potential to widen a technology divide even further. Through presentation and group discussion, this minisymposium highlighted how we might integrate these tools and craft new pedagogies that will continue to engage and challenge our students. We also discussed concerns about these tools in terms of inclusive pedagogy and decolonization of neuroscience.

Electrophysiology is one of the most intimidating topics within the foundational neuroscience curriculum to most undergraduate students. Keeping student attention and engagement during these lectures is equally challenging for educators. Game-based learning is used in many disciplines and levels of education and allows students to apply what they have learned and build community within the classroom. You're Getting on my Nerves was created to help students apply their knowledge of cable properties and practice vocabulary terms with their peers. This board game was originally created using inexpensive products but is also now available for purchase, allowing educators the flexibility to use the game within their budget and available timeframe. Additionally, it can be scaled from introductory to advanced levels and act as a relaxed and entertaining study tool. Students learn what changes in the cell can increase or decrease the action potential's ability to propagate down the axon and begin to describe different cable properties. Each player receives a card to keep track of the amplitude of their action potential. The goal is to move their game piece from the axon hillock to the axon terminal without decaying their action potential to 0. Players draw game cards that instruct them on where to move along the gameboard. The gameboard has color-coded spaces with changes in the axon. Students begin to quickly learn which changes in the cell allow their game piece to propagate forward as they compete with their peers to reach the axon terminal.

Traditionally, science courses focus on knowledge and practices within specific disciplines. There has long been a call, however, to increase the focus on the nature and process of science as a way to improve scientific literacy and increase the transfer of knowledge. Despite this, there are few systematic studies that seek to understand the impact of this approach. Revising a STEM course in a liberal arts curriculum to primarily focus on the nature and process of science rather than on the content of a specific discipline increased student scores on the Test of Scientific Literacy Skills and improved perceptions of STEM. In the revised course, students self-reported higher levels of confidence in their ability to learn scientific information and their ability to contribute to scientific progress compared to traditional methods. These data and other literature suggest that the traditional knowledge-focused approach to science education is insufficient to facilitate scientific literacy and address equity gaps in STEM. Proposed is a model where scientific literacy and feelings of inclusion in STEM are the product of direct engagement in the process of science and careful evaluation of the nature of science. Long-term, a holistic approach that includes an authentic discussion of the enterprise of sciences is needed to prepare students to engage in future problems that are best solved by cross-disciplinary collaboration.

During the pandemic, we filmed our neuroscience labs, and now the videos provide a great resource to flip the lab. Our lab, however, covers a wide range of complicated topics, ranging from gross anatomy, immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining, and fluorescence imaging to cockroach microscopic surgery and measuring nerve conduction velocity on worms and human subjects, and it is challenging to get students to finish watching these complicated experiments. The biggest challenge that students face while watching these experiment demonstrations is their own emotions. When we were editing the films of the labs, we did not reduce the complexity, but we explained concepts by using concepts and objects that students are already familiar with so we do not trigger anxiety. To reduce boredom, we employed three major methods: questioning, humor, and increasing the pace. To address potential anxiety or reluctance about the in-person part of the lab, we mention at the beginning of every lab session that making mistakes is completely acceptable and, as they make mistakes, we help them understand what went wrong and how to correct it. We also introduce additional activities in some lab sessions to pique their interest. For instance, we ask students to test the effects of Red Bull on crickets and investigate whether students who play more video games have higher conduction velocities in the median nerve. Thus far, our flipped lab has been quite successful in terms of maintaining video retention rates and in-person attendance rates. A notable example of the effectiveness of improved hands-on skills is the cockroach microscopic surgery. Before implementing the flipped lab, only 10% of students were able to successfully complete the surgery and acquire nerve activity recordings. With the flipped lab, 90% of students were able to obtain a recording independently.