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

The global COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on teaching approaches across higher education institutions. In this article, we reflect on the lessons learned designing and developing two virtual neuroscience labs and how they can positively contribute to Neuroscience teaching beyond this pandemic.

Online education programs are becoming increasingly prevalent, with the COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerating their prominence. Even as colleges and universities have returned to in-person learning, the need for effective remote learning options remains relevant. Importantly, online programs can increase access for non-traditional students, international students, and under-represented minorities. While information has been published about methods to successfully transition traditional lecture and laboratory courses online, one area that has received less attention has been that of summer programs. Because these programs are typically full-day programs, they present a unique challenge for online engagement. In this study, I describe the development of an online full-day summer neuroscience program that was taught over a three-week period. The main goal of the program was to promote students' future interest in the field of neuroscience. Three additional goals were to introduce them to neuroscience content, give them exposure to reading scientific journal articles, and give them practice with oral presentations. In order to promote these goals, four complementary components were incorporated into each day's programming: 1. Synchronous full-group lectures, 2. Synchronous small-group Journal Clubs, 3. Synchronous small-group Neuroethics Clubs, and 4. Asynchronous lab activities. Student evaluation feedback showed that the program was successful in stimulating the students' future interest in neuroscience. These levels of interest were similar to past in-person versions of the program. Students also gained increased experience with neuroscience content, journal articles, and presentations. Therefore, this program can serve as a template for the design of an effective online neuroscience summer program.

Diversity is a foundational topic in psychology, and APA recommends that diversity is covered across the psychology curriculum. Neuroscience courses face challenges with incorporating diversity-related topics owing to the historical lack of neuroscience research that focuses on diversity and the restricted range of diversity-related topics that neuroscience is typically associated with (i.e., health and disability status). This may limit students' learning of neuroscience's contributions towards understanding diversity. We review some specific examples of diversity-related topics that can be incorporated into neuroscience courses. These examples have been selected to include topics across the three major content domains of neuroscience (cellular/molecular, neuroanatomy/systems, and cognitive/behavioral), as well as across multiple diversity-related topics. Neuroscience instructors can use these examples to incorporate greater coverage of diversity-related topics within their courses and/or as points of inspiration for their own curricular additions. Providing systematic coverage of diversity-related topics in neuroscience courses highlights the ways neuroscience advances our understanding of human diversity and contributes to the educational objectives of psychology and neuroscience programs.

The development of genome editing technologies, including the novel CRISPR/Cas9 technique, has advanced scientific research concerning the contribution of genetics to disease through the creation of new model organisms. The subject of this review is a 2015 study done by Harel et al. from the journal Cell. This study is a prime example of using CRISPR/Cas9 to create a new model organism to accurately model the effects of aging and age-related diseases on a short-lived vertebrate. This study found that the African turquoise killifish is a reliable model to study the physiological process of aging due to its compressed lifespan. In addition, it provides a genotype-to-phenotype platform to study genes related to the hallmarks of aging and age-related diseases. This paper demonstrates this by showing that killifish deficient in the protein subunit of telomerase display telomerase-related pathologies faster than other established vertebrate models. From a teaching perspective, this paper could be used as a resource for educators to teach students about new technologies emerging in the field of neuroscience and the importance of model organisms. Specifically, for upper-level undergraduate students, this paper could serve as a real-world example of how scientific techniques such as CRISPR/Cas9 could be used to answer scientific questions. Further, it shows how these techniques could bring forward new model organisms better suited to answer the scientific questions being asked. Learning these techniques and being open minded to new approaches will be advantageous to students' future careers in science.

Teaching contemplative neuroscience is emerging as a way to increase the reach and relevance of our field to a wider undergraduate population while also encouraging the beneficial practice of contemplation. In-person classes on the topic have been shown to improve both academic learning and attitudes towards science and meditation. Here we show that a short-term, asynchronous online course in contemplative neuroscience had comparable benefits. Students completed the Determinants of Meditation Practice Inventory (DMPI; Williams et al., 2011) and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown and Ryan, 2003) at the start and end of the course. Their scores showed reduced barriers to meditation and improved mindfulness after the course, changes predictive of a range of positive behavioral and well-being outcomes. Students also rated the course as highly effective in advancing neuroscience understanding and competency. A comparison group (from an online general psychology class) showed no increase in mindfulness and a significantly weaker reduction in meditation barriers. This success of an online class in both academic and social-emotional learning is promising given the rapid growth of online instruction and the improved access it can provide to non-traditional students. The class format together with its health-relevant topic could thus be a valuable tool for reaching a more diverse student body while at the same time promoting practices linked to both personal and societal benefits.

Neuroscience students often seem more responsive to laboratory exercises that involve human brains. Here we describe a lab that utilizes human brain MRIs to evaluate a long-standing debate over the presence of sex differences in the human brain, specifically the corpus callosum. Students at both Widener and UCLA measured corpus callosum subregions that were already marked-off as described by Witelson (1989) or by Hofer and Frahm (2006). Statistical analyses revealed sex differences using both schemes after correcting for the size of the midsagittal cortex. Widener students, however, uncovered more sex differences than the UCLA students. Lab instruction for UCLA students occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. So, lab sessions were completely online. In contrast, Widener students had the benefit of in-person lab instruction. Nonetheless, both the data obtained from the images of the corpus callosi as well as measures of pedagogical efficacy were similar between the two institutions, suggesting that distance learning may be a valuable and viable option. Further, when in person learning is not an option, such as during a pandemic, digital databases serve as invaluable resources for online learning. When these databases are utilized in a hypothesis driven research setting, they can serve as the basis for course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), which are known to benefit students-improving retention in science fields.

Feeding in pond snails has long been a model system for central pattern generation and its modulation. The pattern is generated by a small set of neurons in the buccal ganglia, which innervate the buccal mass, esophagus, and salivary glands. In this exercise, students observe feeding behavior and then record and quantify rhythmic motor activity and its response to feeding stimulants and neuromodulators. In a standard three-hour class period, students do a dissection, record from several nerves, and perform experimental manipulations such as adding feeding stimulants, serotonin, or dopamine to the preparation. Depending on the course goals, data can be presented qualitatively or cyclic measurements and spike-rate analysis can be done. This exercise leads to discussion of neural circuitry and intrinsic properties that support pattern generation for rhythmic activities such as feeding, locomotion, and respiration.

Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education was facing pressure both to modify traditional instruction practices to more learner-centered instruction and to meet the increased demand for flexible instruction (including hybrid and online). These pressures have increased the need for high quality, engaging content for instruction across all modalities (including in-person, hybrid, and online). To address this need of neuroscience educators, we developed the FUN Exchange, an online repository that is accessible to educators without a paid membership and that is endorsed by the Faculty of Undergraduate Neuroscience organization. Furthermore, the resource is community-driven, allowing educators to contribute and vet submissions to the Exchange. Hosted on AirTable, there are currently more than 475 resources available that are organized by resource type ranging from Class Activities to Simulation Exercises and that can be searched by subject area as well as key words. We believe the FUN Exchange can be a one-stop shop for educators interested in high-quality neuroscience teaching resources useful for all teaching modalities-in-person, hybrid, and online.