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

Neurophysiology is crucial but often-intimidating subject for undergraduate students. To address the challenge of "neurophobia" educators have developed myriad techniques to inspire students and enhance their interest in the discipline. We therefore sought employ one such innovation to further engage our students, leveraging students' familiarity with food to make the abstract concept of the action potential accessible. Seventy-seven Foundation Year students undertook a 60-minute in-person didactic lecture and then a two-hour active learning class using Smarties and Play-Doh to make a detailed model of an action potential and its constituent phases. They were given a post-activity five-point Likert questionnaire with four open-ended questions, and responses were analyzed with a weighted average (χ̄ _w ). Broadly, students enjoyed the playfulness of the activity and agreed that they would like to repeat it. Respondents did not agree that the activity per se motivated them, but they agreed that the activity improved their knowledge of action potentials, felt the format was appropriate to check their knowledge, and felt that it helped identify weaknesses in their understanding. Students felt they were able to connect with their team during the activity, that they learned from their teammates during the activity, and teamwork as a positive was a repeated theme in the open answer questions. Using Smarties to teach action potentials is a fun and effective way to teach neurophysiology and further research is required to determine its impact on student attainment.

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) engage students in the research process to promote active learning of complex material. We created a 5-week Biopsychology Laboratory (Biopsych) CURE that integrates concepts in genetics, neurotransmission, autonomic regulation, executive function, electroencephalography, and human subjects research. The underlying principles of the Biopsych CURE focus on how the prefrontal cortex orchestrates cognitive control and coordinates parasympathetic activity. The rs4680 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene may explain individual variability in prefrontal cortical function since the presence of the A versus G alleles directly affects neurotransmission in this region. To assess this, students in the Biopsych CURE conducted a prospective cohort study on themselves to examine whether there would be differences between rs4680 GG, AG, and AA genotypes in executive function, parasympathetic activity, and frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA). During the allotted class time, students successfully learned to collect buccal swab samples, isolate DNA, quantify DNA with a spectrophotometer, and use the iWorx data acquisition system to measure heart rate, vagal tone, and alpha and beta EEG waves. They also learned to analyze the data and wrote a research report on their findings. For their class research project, they found that the GG genotype had higher vagal tone compared to A carriers while taking the Stroop test, indicating greater parasympathetic activity. The GG genotype also showed higher FAA compared to A carriers while viewing emotional face presentations, indicating greater left cortical activity. This suggests that the GG genotype may display parasympathetic and cortical activity patterns that are generally conceded as advantageous to mental health. Students learned to graphically depict their data and wrote a research report on their findings. Overall, the Biopsych CURE enabled students to work actively with core topics in the field while conducting meaningful research and the course evaluations demonstrated high student satisfaction with CURE activities.

Any written work concerning the history of neuroanatomy would be difficult to imagine without acknowledging the pioneering works of Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Camillo Golgi. Cajal improved upon Golgi's staining technique at the turn of the 20th century. He implemented it to deliver the world's first incredibly detailed visualizations of cellular networks of the nervous system. Dating further back to the 15th century, most students of neuroanatomy or of the philosophy of science are familiar with René Decartes' depiction of mind-body dualism which illustrates the passing of visual information to the brain. These illustrations (i.e., mostly Cajal's) have gone on to significantly influence future research, commonly featured as visual aids in neuroscience presentations. Like most of the historical depictions of the brain, including medieval illustrations of trepanning, these drawings are of western European origin. Little, if any work has attempted to compile or assess historical depictions of the brain from outside of the western world. It is very likely that non-western historical depictions of the brain exist, but are less popularized and have been scarce in the circulating historical literature. Thus, more historical investigations are required to balance these views for a complete historical lens on neuroanatomy. Since early civilizations existed far across the globe, it is likely that depictions of the nervous system have existed before the aforementioned scholars who make up the mainstream approach to neuroanatomy history education. The present work aims to introduce students and instructors of neuroscience, and particularly neuroanatomy, to other early illustrated neuroanatomical works which may be less popularized. Additionally, this assessment seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the historical emergence of neuroscience and more specifically, neuroanatomy. This article attempts to start this conversation, utilizing what are thought to be the first modern neuroanatomical analyses of some of the cited illustrations from the non-western world.

Students are thinking about ethical, moral, and societal implications of science-as individuals and communities- regardless of whether these topics are part of formal curricula. Ethical questions can arise from broad neuroscientific questions (What is consciousness?), emerging topics (e.g., synthetic biological intelligence), neurotechnologies (e.g., human brain organoids), and respective intersections (Could brain organoids be intelligent or conscious?). As a field of scholarship, the ethics of brain science, or 'neuroethics', can help students to situate what they are learning in the classroom within a broader socio-philosophical context that advances critical and ethical reasoning toward future neuroscience research or technologies. I will argue that neuroethics can also enhance student situational interest and cognitive engagement with core neuroscientific concepts that align with core learning objectives. Yet faculty face challenges when incorporating neuroethics topics into courses, which may include, but are not limited to i) lack of disciplinary expertise, ii) time or resource constraints within courses, or iii) the perceived lack of value in formally including ethics instructional content in courses focused on core concepts in neuroscience education. This Opinion article aims to demonstrate how these challenges can be overcome. I describe how the Value Reappraisal Model can be used as a process theory to guide integration of neuroethics into neuroscience curricula. My autoethnographic account of developing and teaching a new course provides a case study for faculty who are interested in creating curricular opportunities for students to engage with ethical issues by fostering deeper learning and appreciation of core concepts in neuroscience.

As a subset of active learning, gamification involves the application of gaming principles as a means of improving student outcomes in the classroom. Recent work has shown that such active learning strategies may be particularly effective at reducing the rate of failure in STEM courses. In this retrospective case study, I examined the effects on student exam performance, rate of failure, and perception of instruction following a semester-long course improvement project that involved implementing a novel tabletop style roleplaying game (Build-a-Zombie) during lab sessions in an undergraduate neuroanatomy course. The game I developed tasked students with using their knowledge from lecture to design their own pathological zombie nervous system. When compared to a previous cohort, students in the gamified version of the course showed significantly increased exam scores, a trend toward decreased rates of failure, and a more positive perception of instruction, even though lecture and exam content remained the same.

Supplementing textbooks with primary literature in teaching neuroscience is a growing practice associated with several positive outcomes, such as increased content knowledge, research and data skills, and critical thinking. This pedagogical approach, however, still needs further development to make it accessible to instructors and valuable to students. This article describes a series of published articles we used in an undergraduate neuroimmunology course. Articles were selected to supplement the teaching of significant principles in the neuroimmunology of disease in neuro-infections, autoimmune diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases. Specifically, articles on multiple sclerosis, experimental autoimmune encephalitis, Herpes Simplex Virus 1, SIV/HIV infections, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's diseases are described, and the pedagogical value of each is enunciated. These sources could be incorporated into a range of undergraduate and graduate courses to introduce several topics and principles of neuroimmunology.

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) provide a variety of benefits to student learning outcomes. Here we describe an upper-level semester-long CURE that was implemented in Spring 2024 at Amherst College, a small liberal arts college, as part of the NEUR 313: Social Neuroendocrinology course. In the CURE students conducted behavioral and immunohistochemical assays in the fighting fish Betta splendens. Students assessed whether behavioral and neural response differed between fish exposed to social and nonsocial stimuli. The CURE exposed students to a suite of behavioral, wet lab, and data analysis techniques. In addition to completing weekly lab primers, the students' research efforts culminated in a final written paper and oral presentation where students integrated both mechanistic and eco-evolutionary thinking. The CURE was very positively reviewed by the students, and future iterations of the CURE can be easily modified to fit new research topics that further explore biological questions through a neuroethological lens.

It is well-understood that active learning approaches have positive learning outcomes and improve retention. Active learning strategies for the neuroscience laboratory setting have been extensively developed. Fewer active learning approaches are available for the traditional lecture-based setting. Here we describe novel active learning exercises that teach fundamental principles of neuronal circuits and synaptic connectivity ideal for introductory neuroscience courses. Given the complexity of synaptic networks in the brain and the difficulty this material can present to students, our novel exercises can be beneficial to the neuroscience education community.