BIOL 3050

*This class was taught by both Ignacio Provencio and John Campbell, but I tried to mainly focus on Prof Campbell*
This class was required for my Neuroscience major, so as a major requirement I wish this class had some more resources. This class was taught with a new textbook for the first time by Prof. Campbell and Prof. Provencio, and they stated at the beginning of the class that this semester would be a trial run. Hopefully, they give future students of this class more resources than they gave us, because they really left us to fend for ourselves for a large part.

For the reason that students would stop coming to lectures, Prof Provencio and Prof Campbell did not make lecture recordings public. Neither professor gave us a study guide, past exams, practice questions beyond the 1-2 PollEv questions per lecture, review sessions before exams, or any kind of structure to help us prepare for exams other than the lecture slides. It also seemed like Prof Campbell just used the pre-made slides given by the textbook creators and added his own notes here and there.

The only way to truly capture all the material you need to know for the exam is to find a way to record the lectures and THOROUGHLY read the textbook chapters. I used Chat GPT to quiz myself using my own study guides that I created based on my lecture notes and the slides.

There were 4 exams and 1 final which were equally weighted (although our final was cancelled due to inclement weather). Each exam except for exam 4 and the final focused on 6 lectures and about 2-3 chapters each. Here is the outline they follows:
Exam 1: Introduction to Neurons, Membrane Potentials, Signaling across Synapses
Exam 2: Visual, Olfactory, Gustatory, Auditory, Somatosensory system (With a large focus on vision and audition)
Exam 3: Motor pathways, Homeostatic pathways, sexual behavior (This exam concentrated on involuntary movement + reflexes)
Exam 4: Memory, Synaptic plasticity, Brain disorders (Specifically Alzheimer's and Parkinson's)

My advice for at least Campbell's exams is to really know the studies involved and what each one revealed about the mechanism of a neural pathway, a protein, or some functionality in neurons. Ideally spend 3-4 hours a week to read the textbook alongside the lectures. Record the lectures, preferably transcribing them, and use it to quiz yourself on the content before exams. This is what I did, but if you can do more, you should.