NEUR30002: Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits

- After all the frustration and difficulty I've vented towards the subject, you would think that this means people did poorly on both 25% msts. On the contrary, you could actually see a negative skew in the grade distributions where 50% of the class scored H1s in the 1st MST and 40% scored H1s for the second one. Overall, 33% of students received H1s at the end of the subject. It was clear the coordinators knew that the class were very smart, hence the lack of help except in discussion board. Without any tutorials, limited exam papers, ok teaching styles, a lot of students were capable of doing well. This is still confusing to me because the grade distribution in NEUR30003 was nothing like this! Not only that but the MSTs would give less than 1 minute/question which really makes me think that those enrolled in neurophys are monsters (including me lol..) The final exam was fair though. It provided 108 questions with 2 hours given. However, there were clear signs that the coordinators were not careful in drafting this paper. One obvious sign was when we had an extended matching question and the abbreviation for an answer was given in the question. The abbreviation (SVZ) was next to the blanked space and you only had 1 option to pick from in the list hinting that things were messy behind the scenes.

I decided to write a review on this subject because the current reviews are slightly outdated and i wanted to discuss some issues with this subject. This is a subject that can be part of a LOT of majors. You'll find that people majoring in neuroscience, physiology, HSF and apparently even cell and developmental biology. So this subject provides a lot of options for those undecided on their major. In essence, this is an extension of the neuro bits seen in PHYS20008 and the neurophysiology component in BIOM20002. The strange thing about this subject is the lack of prerequisites. To me, it seems like this subject punishes 1st yr adventurers who don't take into mind the recommended subjects because I would be completely lost and would be crying if I did this in 1st yr. This review will be subjective because I did do NEUR30003 as well but I will try to be objective here.

Yes, with screen capture etc.

- Andrew Allen, Angelina Fong, Joel Bornstein, Graham Barrett, Stuart McDougall, Song Yao, Shitij Kapur

I'll start off by saying that the the 1st few lectures were very basic in that they were review sessions of whatever we learnt in 2nd year. It was the same content with a few pedantic details to take note of. Simple concepts of the biochemistry in producing action potentials were present where we were expected to know how certain neurotransmitters were synthesized in neurons or what was the protein structure of certain channels. These were good lectures and they were presented very well. From the experimental techniques to record neurons, things just went downhill, things became dry and lecturers did not feel very engaging. The content was definitely interesting but they were presented in a way that it seemed like they wanted to fail students rather than educate. The content in this subject somewhat flows with each other with the exception of ENS which seems like a system on its own.

From here on out (week 3 or 4 onwards), the textbook was almost useless because the lecturers focused on recent research in neurophysiology except Graham's content. Graham's content were biochemistry topics regarding signalling in neurons. If you took MCB, this is not challenging at all. I'm not going to mention which lecturer but it was clear from the piazza board that people were so frustrated with his lecturing style and found the MST questions completely unfair. I have to agree on this because I had to actually watch the lecture recordings and write things word for word because questions in the MST were asking things that seemed subtle and minor. It destroyed my ability to actually learn from lectures when the next set of lecturers took over. Rather than understanding which physiology often stresses on, it felt like I had to rote learn things comprehensively without understanding at all.

It was mentioned in the beginning of our lectures that PollEv would be implemented and while it was useful when a certain lecturer was lecturing. It was not consistent throughout the semester and would've been great if each lecturer did use this.

One saving grace of the lecture series though was that we had an opportunity to be lectured by the dean of MDHS - Prof Shitij Kapur. This definitely did not fail to disappoint because his lecturing style was the most simplest but most interesting and while it was not examinable, it was one of the best lectures I've ever had in my undergraduate studies.

After going through my list of complaints, one great thing about the subject was Angelina's coordination. While she may be busy coordinating the 2nd yr research subject, any student could see she was doing her very best in providing us information and helping us in discussion boards. Her replies would often be very prompt and helpful as well. One could see she understands our needs when she presented her respiratory lectures. Things were so clear and you knew what you had to study even though it was very complicated. You should only do this subject if you're interested in the nervous system and don't mind looking at its cellular and biochemical level. However, do not do this subject if you have interest in finding out how this explains behaviour. That is explained in Principles of Neuroscience. And more importantly, do not do this if you're a first year. This may be very painful to go through without the recommended knowledge. A few people were upset doing this subject and have expressed pain in the discussion boards.

A side note: There were some people that complained it was unfair that those doing NEUR30003 had an advantage doing this subject. However, I think this is completely fair. People who chose to do both subjects are most likely actually interested in the areas of the nervous system. It is inevitable that both subjects have overlapping content because they need to go through big ideas already discovered.

PM for any questions

None. But a sample MST paper was given for both MSTs

2.5 Out of 5

Purves etc al., Neuroscience, 5 th edition, 2012: Sinauer Associates (Not necessary. Will only cover the 1st quarter of the lectures)

3 lectures/week

2018, Sem 1

H1

2 x MST (25% each), 1 x 2 hour exam (50%)

From ion channel biochemistry to the clinical consequences of spinal cord injury, this subject covers not only the essential aspects of neurophysiology, but thanks to Andrew Allen, goes above and beyond to include the current research in the field as well. I went into the subject expecting that it would be dull and uninteresting. But I am glad to say that I was abundantly wrong. In fact, it turned out to be my favourite subject this semester (second favourite in my degree).

The lecturers were all very interesting to listen to; I especially enjoyed the "focus on disease" lectures, in which the lecturer discussed the neurophysiology and how it can be implicated in a disease or disease process and hopefully how medicine is aiming to ameliorate the symptoms arising from the disease. I found them to be fascinating given that these lectures were also reliant on current and ongoing research and clinical trials. Graham's series of lectures on memory were excellent and were also a fantastic way to end the semester. Topics covered include ion conductance, ion channel structure and function, neuromodulation, neurotransmission, neuronal circuits (autonomic reflexes), enteric nervous system, memory, and injury to and repair of the nervous system.

The first MST was not too hard. In saying that, it was, however, appreciably easy to make careless errors on the test. The second was fairly easy (and I daresay a little too easy). Either way, both tests were very fair, but time is more of a constraint in these tests compared to other subjects that I have taken. Given that the order of lecture content moved around a little between 2014 and 2015, unfortuantely I cannot accurately advise what will be covered in each test.

The exam was all multiple choice with simple and extended question types. Even though no practice exams were given, I do not think that would have been necessary anyway. This subject emphasises understanding the neurophysiology and applying it. Hence, understand the key concepts and the rest is pretty straightforward. There were no real surprises on the exam, which was a very nice surprise!

I highly recommend this subject. The content covered has great utility not only in the field of neuroscience, but is also somewhat pertinent to critical thinking, which is an added bonus. Hats off to Andrew Allen for taking us beyond textbook science, because this subject definitely benefits from it. So, if you want to know about how the baroreceptor reflex works in detail, or how the hippocampus converts short-term memory to long-term memory, take this subject. It is also worth noting that NEUR30002 has about 30% overlap with NEUR30003, which is certainly helpful during exam time.

Yes, with screen capture

A. Allen, J. Bornstein, G. Barrett, A. Turnley, J. Furness, C. Parish

No past papers

5 out of 5

Neuroscience

36 x 1 hour lecture

2015 Semester 1

H1