I was invited by prof. White to attend the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in 2023 (SfN2023). Flying from Netherlands to the United States to attend a conference opens the possibility to add a vacation in the States to the trip.
Before the conference I and my husband Hans had a wonderful trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Smoky Mountains. We had a great time. Highlights were: the beautiful fall colours, the Foxfire Museum, the Cumberland Gap, the impressive Appalachian Mountains and the kind and above all the friendly people we met.
The annual meeting SfN2023
Meeting Venue SfN2023
About 25,000 people attended the meeting from November 11th until November 16th in Washington DC. As a result Hotels are fully booked and so are restaurants. Therefore you have to make reservations well in advance. Attendees were everywhere. For example: Travelling back to the Netherlands in the subway to Dulles airport, a fellow traveller asked Ellen if she had been to the conference (she seemed familiar, which seems peculiar when there are so many visitors). He had been to the meeting, had presented a poster, and was full of it. On the plane to the Netherland there were quite some poster tubes around. Ellen asked two of their carriers to which meeting they had been; it was SfN2023.
In 2020 we prepared a poster for presentation at SfN2020 in Washington D.C. ( see: Website for distance learning in Neuroscience). We were not able to present the poster as the meeting was canceled due to the developing pandemic of COVID-19.
Welcome to our on-campus students in the Duke University School of Medicine
On 3 January 2017, the first medical students at the Duke University School of Medicine (Durham, North Carolina USA)will start a four-week course that covers cellular neurobiology, systems neurophysiology, clinical neuroanatomy, and cognitive neuroscience.
“Brain and Behavior”, by Kevin Parks
The name of the course is “Brain and Behavior” and is part of the required preclinical science curriculum for medical students at Duke. Professor White is the instructor in this course. They will work through all of Medical Neuroscience, with some additional content on cognition and biological psychiatry, before their final exam on January 30th.
We (the Medical Neuroscience Learning Community) would like to welcome those students to the Course Medical Neuroscience and to the supportive website Learn Medical Neuroscience. Moreover, we hope to meet the on-campus students on the Medical Neuroscience discussion forums with questions and reactions to posts of other students. Especially we would like to see their images of their learning experience and the images they produce of neurobiological structures posted with #GetNeuro on Instagram appear on the image carousel on the page Learning Community.
Coursera has been using a session based course platform in the past. Courses started at fixed points in time and students wanting to take the course at a time it was not scheduled had to wait for the next run of the course. That has changed, from now on you enroll and immediately start courses on the new on-demand course platform of Coursera
The first session of Medical Neuroscience was in 2013. The course is designed for people that are enrolled in a health professions curriculum or are preparing to do so. The intellectual challenge and content level of this course is comparable to what first-year students in the graduate-level health professions would experience and the course is expected to require 16-20 hours per week of effort.
Medical Neuroscience, data 2013, 2014, 2015 . Source : https://online.duke.edu/around-the-world-and-back-again-the-story-of-a-mooc/
During all the sessions there good, lively and instructive discussions on the Discussion Forum.
The Final Google Hangout of the last session based course of Medical Neuroscience (the course will continue in the on-demand format). With Prof. White and Nicholas Janes on Thursday, March 17, 2016.
Maggie Morton, Community Teaching Assistant (CTA) on this session reports:
A general roadmap to successful study has been developed by course mentors and staff: Roadmap for effective learning. This Roadmap presents a clear overview of things to do and things to avoid, the table at the end with Do <-> Do not. The Roadmap is a concrete step by step example of an application of the fundamentals of learning.
Roadmap for effective learning
And then there is a Study Strategy especially for the course:
Focus on course material
Use the materials of the website www.learnmedicalneuroscience.nl in your learning. Do not forget to take a look at the page Learning Materials
It works best if you really focus on the course materials. Course materials are: Video Tutorials, Tutorial Notes and the textbook (if it is available to you). You can use the resources on the website to complement the course materials.
It is a good idea to to scan the tutorial notes before watching the Video Tutorials . Let the Tutorial Notes provide the framework for understanding the tutorial. The framework from the tutorial notes might make it easier for you to understand the tutorial right away. Do not go too deeply into the notes (it will take too much of your time). If you have the textbook, it is very useful to look up the figures that are mentioned in the text.
Tutorial Notes can be found below the Video at the right-hand side of the screen under Downloads if the course is opened in a web browser it is different in the app.
Place tutorial notes in Coursera app
Place Tutorial Notes in the Coursera App. First click on “Attachments” then click the book icon. After that Tutorial Notes open.
If English is a problem you can also download the Transcript (also under Downloads as you can see in the image above) and read them before watching the video. Then you can follow what prof. White explains more easily.
It is very useful to take notes while you watch the tutorials . You can make rough sketches of what is shown. That is very useful in your study of neuroscience, as demonstrated in “Visualize your knowledge” ( Tutorial Video Your Part! at 07:15).
Giulia Petitto, a mentor of our course has shared her Notebook Medical Neuroscience with us. We recommend that you take a look at Giulia’s Notebook for yourself. You can find it here.
Notebook Medical Neuroscience by Giulia Petitto De Gregorio
Use Quizzes to learn the course material
When you prepare for a Unit Quiz it is best if you study the Tutorial Notes again. You can use them when doing the Unit Quiz.
The quizzes are wonderful learning material. You can take 3 quizzes every 8 hours, after 8 hours have past you can start afresh that means you have an unlimited amount of quiz attempts. That allows you to learn from your mistakes. It is a good idea to repeat each quiz as many times as possible, because each time you take a given quiz it will be populated with different questions and answer choices.
“Visualize your knowledge”- prof. Len White, Tutorial Video Your Part! at 07:15
The Course Medical Neuroscience
Welcome to the Learn Medical Neuroscience website. Most of all this neuroscience website supports members of the learning community of the Coursera course “Medical Neuroscience“. Prof. Len White from Duke University teaches this course. Other Neuroscience learners are welcome of course but they are not primary target group of the website.
The website Learn Medical Neuroscience
The information presented here is intended to strengthen a learner’s knowledge and understanding of course content as well as to provide information about useful learning strategies. As such, all of the information herein is for supplementary strengthening purposes and is not intended to exceed the scope of the course.
This website was made and is maintained by Ellen Vos-Wisse, an active member ( Mentor) of the Medical Neuroscience learning community. Find out more about Ellen on the contact page of this website where she tells you more about her background and her connection to Medical Neuroscience.
Structure of the website Learn Medical Neuroscience
This is the place for more information on the Global Medical Neuroscience class. Here you can find information on how to use the discussion forum on the course website, examples from pictures of #GetNeuro challenges from the course that are shared on Instagram and the link to a highly active Facebook group for the course. There are nice pictures on ‘Medical Neuroscience behind the scenes’. The News page presents news about the course and general neuroscience news, all relevant to the learning community.
Actually this is the core of the website. You can find a list of links to relevant websites on the internet all about the brain in the Virtual Lab . The Virtual Lab has 7 sub pages. The structure of the Medical Neuroscience course is the foundation of the Virtual Lab. The page Virtual Lab explains the structure of the content of this part of the website. The featured videos are a nice part of the Virtual Lab. Featured videos are short videos on the field of Neuroscience relevant to the information of the content of the page. They are not always directly linked to the content of the sub page of the virtual lab.They form a complement to the core material of the course and give additional insight.
At this page you can find more links to more websites. The sites that this part of the website links to do not explain course content. This page presents links to websites you can use to review your Neuroscience knowledge. This page also contains Neuroscience book recommendations. In addition to that there is a link to the Summary of Pathways Medical Neuroscience. This Summary of Pathways is a document, free of copyright, made especially for this course. You can download it directly from the site.
The Neurological Exam is a part of the website with links to sites and videos explaining the neurological exam. There is a link to the especially relevant site NeuroLogical Cases of the University of Utah. This is very systematic and educationally thorough site to learn the Neurological Exam. Other resources are also present on this page. Such as ‘Clinical Neurology Videos’ a wonderful resource, specifically created to enhance and facilitate the study of Neurology. You can also have a look at the cases in the paragraph: ‘Dealing with Neurological Constraints’. There you find inspirational material that shows that people can adapt to great neurological constraints and live a full life despite these constraints.
At the right side of the screen (not on pages of the Virtual Lab and the page Neurological Exam) you see News and under that pages with Study Strategy and Study Tips. These pages have proven very useful to learners in the past. You can check them out and use them to your advantage. Last but certainly not least there is the Course Bulletin Board. There you can find information that is important when you take the course like: Where are the Tutorial Notes? What happens to my grades when I switch to a next session?
The website has been well used since the start the site in 2016. On May 23 2021 there have been 160,495 users of the site and 696,501 pageviews. You can see in the graph below that the use of the site intensified during the pandemic.
Number of pageviews in time of the website www.learnmedicalneuroscience.nl
Featured Video: “Picture of a thought”on Vimeo by Per Byhring This video is produced by sciencenordic.com / forskning.no. Animation and Music: Per Byhring – perbyhring.com. Script and Camera: Arnfinn Christensen
General Resources Virtual Lab
(Please be careful with what you share to avoid copyright infringement)
Neuroscience, 2nd edition on the NCBI Bookshelf. D. Purves et al. 2001, Sinauer Associates, Inc. For more information, see the Bookshelf Copyright Notice.
Most relevant figures from the second edition of the course textbook for sensory and motor systems are below. You can copy the name of the figure and paste it in ‘Search in this book’. Then a list of relevant pages will appear. Click ‘Show details’ of the most relevant page and a link to the most relevant page appears, click that and scroll down to locate the figure.
Glossary– Neuroscience 2th edition, Sinauer. Direct link to the online glossary of the textbook.
UBC Neuroanatomy. A very good site by the University of British Columbia.
BrainFacts.org a very rich site. It is a public information initiative of The Kavli Foundation, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, and the Society for Neuroscience. Powered by the global neuroscience community and overseen by an editorial board of leading neuroscientists from around the world. It has a very good 3D Brain, interactive presentations of the Neuroscience Core Concepts and the BrainFacts Book.
3-D Brain App by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. A very useful 3D model of the brain. It has descriptions of various brain structures, associated functions, associated cognitive disorders, etc. It is useful for the preparation of Quizzes and especially relevant for the Comprehensive Final Exam. It was accessible with the internet browser, but that site used Flash, it does not work anymore. You have to download the App. You can get the free 3D Brain app from Google play and Windows Phone and the App Store from Apple.
Neuroscientifically Challenged: Clarifying series of short videos (2 minutes each) which will help you learn the basics of neuroscience, in short, easy-to-understand snippets!
Copyright
You have to respect copyrights. Here are the copyright data of some of the resources this website links to.
Neuroscience, 2nd edition. Editors: Dale Purves et al.: Sinauer Associates; 2001. You can not share the material from this resource, not even for educational purposes.
Human brain by Anatomie – Amsterdam. Website made exclusively for educational purposes. All rights on materials are reserved. You are not allowed to commercially trade the material without written and signed approval of the owners/creators. Educators and students may use the material provided they do not modify contents, reverse engineer or otherwise infringe the intellectual rights and provided they quote the source: www. https://anatomy-neurosciences.com/education/humanbrain/ .
Genes to Cognition . Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is owner of the copyrights. This material can’t be shared, not even for educational purposes. You can only link to the site.
Featured videos
Featured videos: only YouTube and Vimeo videos with a “Share” button have been embedded. If the owner enables the Share button, it means that they allow others to embed the video. If the copyright owner of the video has made a mistake and does not want the video embedded despite the Share button, please inform me. I will remove the video immediately. -Ellen-
You have arrived at the core of this website: The Medical Neuroscience Virtual Lab. In Tutorial Video Your Part! at 05:57 Prof. White advises you to: “Follow the path“.
The structure of the course is the foundation of the Virtual Lab. You can find valuable links to enriching resources. If you use the Virtual Lab you are not tempted to browse the internet to find resources for yourself. It will help you to develop an effective Study Strategy.
You can find many resources online, but some are in violation of copyright. To develop good resources, income is often generated by selling access to the book, image, app, website, etc. If those resources end up being freely available the income needed to generate new resources is lost.
For the Virtual Lab, open resources and resources that can be used for educational purposes are used in the links. If you find resources that are protected by copyright and should not be on the Virtual Lab in the links, please let us know by using the contact form.
Featured videos: only YouTube and Vimeo videos with a “Share” button have been embedded. If the owner enables the Share button, it means that they allow others to embed the video. If the copyright owner of the video has made a mistake and does not want the video embedded despite the Share button, please inform me. I will remove the video immediately. -Ellen-
