[gggggg]

Basic and Clinical Neuroscience
Prof: Dr. Ullal.

The course introduces neuroscience from both a basic science perspective (Molecular biology, neurophysiology, neuroanatomy, etcc....) and a clinical perspective (Neurological diseases, neuroimaging, symptoms and treatments of various neurological diseases). This course is very interesting in my opinion since it really integrated various aspects of science and medicine. If you are interested in either medicine, science or the brain, this course is for you. We covered a wide range of topics including channelpathologies, meninges, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, dementia, viral or bacterial infections of the brain, and more. Usually he introduces each new "topic" by giving us a vignette (or a clinical story) to think about, and then he introduces both the scientific aspect of the disease and the clinical aspect of the disease.

The professor, Dr. Ullal, is a very good professor. Although he has a slight accent, but he tries his hardest to make everyone understand the material and he always encourages us to ask questions. He is generally clear and good at explaining the course content.

The evaluation includes two 25% midterms and an exam. The tests and exams consist of a multiple choice section and a written portion. The test usually have 15 MCs and around 3-4 Short answer questions. In my opinion, the questions are relatively simple, and the TAs marked pretty generously. If you study and memorize the contents, you should do well. The exam is a little bit harder, but it is still fair. There are no assignments in this class, therefore, workload is not too heavy.

There are NO textbooks for this class, so going to the lectures are essential.

Thought I would put my review up on here as well since I just took this course. This is a new course - a hybrid of Psych 2F03 and 2N03 (I believe?) taught by Dr. Ullal. Overall, the material is really interesting and the Dr. Ullal teaches it in an interactive way. For instance, he'll introduce a disorder of some sort and present a case study first that outlines symptoms and the situation and then he dicusses the causation, preventions or treatments afterwards.

In terms of midterms and final exam: there is a LOT of memorization, be warned. The midterms are each 25% so it's important to do well on them, and then there's always that burdensome 50% exam. There are no assignments or readings or random extra work so the work load is very light but that puts more pressure on doing well for the only three evaluations in this course. His midterms are made up of MC and short answer, and are usually only out of 15 marks or so. His MC were 0.5 each (around 20 of them on the midterms), 3 short answer questions that were typically like "Outline the stages of ____ disorder", there were also fill in the blanks which get VERY specific. Biggest recommendation is to MEMORIZE, even the smallest details. I remember the exam asked very very specific questions.

Random tips for the exam: know (dis)advantages for various techniques (ex. neuroimaging techniques such as MRI, fMRI, CT --> which is better than which, which one is best for what type of situation), know symptoms of various disorders or diseases because he may ask what might a person with ____ experience and name one treatment, etc. As I already said, the fill in the blanks get specific and really there's only one answer so you can't BS your way out of those.

Overall, very interesting material, lots of memorization, no BSing type questions - just know or go typed ones. If you are really good at memorizing (and I mean REALLY good at it) then this course is an easy 12!

I just took this course this past year and I really enjoyed it. Marks can only be obtained from 2 midterms and 1 final exam.

The topics covered start off with a vignette, or case study, which is explored from a neurological standpoint including symptoms, signs, and the mechanism behind the condition/disease. There was no textbook for this class, as opposed to the anti-requisite, LIFE SCI 2C03, so you do need to attend lectures to get information for midterms and final exams.

Dr. Ullal has a very unique teaching style and despite his slight accent, classes were usually interesting and enjoyable. He welcomes questions during classes and his tests are fairly straightforward with no trick questions.

The TAs for this course were also fantastic. They were friendly, approachable, and knowledgeable about the topics. Both the TAs and Dr. Ullal responded to e-mails quickly (within 1-2 days) and marks are open for negotiation if you found that it could be interpreted differently.

A disadvantage to the course is that midterms and the final exam were marked out of so few marks that even getting one or two answers wrong highly impacted your final grade.

I was really looking forward to this class but I was quite disappointed. The professor was Dr. Khan and she was new to McMaster this year. At first she was so enthusiastic and although I was on the fence about the course, this convinced me to take it. However, I found that her teaching style was really not very effective (for me, at least). At the beginning of every chapter, she would go very, very slowly and repeat everything multiple times, however it was the basic stuff that was emphasized (prior knowledge, given that you had taken the prerequisites). Towards the end of the chapter, Dr. Khan realized that we were a little behind and we would rush through the more difficult material. This happened for most of the chapters.

When the course was offered in previous years, the marking scheme was 2 midterms and an exam, however this year there were 2 midterms (each 20%), a final worth 35%, weekly in-class I-clicker quizzes worth 10% and an assignment called MacEngaged that was worth 15%.

MacEngaged was an interesting idea - we had to read a letter called "Forward with Integrity" written by Dr. Patrick Deane, McMaster's president, and one of the things that was emphasized in the letter was the importance of integrating community engagement into courses, which Dr. Khan tried to implement by organizing MacEngaged. We formed groups of 5-6 and every Friday during the lecture time slot we would do our quiz and then get into our groups to discuss the project. We had to come up with a project that would allow us to use the content of the course to make a difference in the community. We were evaluated on the statement of work which we had to put together outlining how our project was relevant to the course, how it would make a difference in the community, how it would be implemented, etc. and then at the end of the semester we had to submit a reflection discussing what we learned from the assignment, how the project worked/if it made a difference in the community, etc. We were competing with the other groups for a chance to have lunch with Dr. Deane, and severaaaal groups put a lott of work into the assignment - people made apps, they designed workshops and got them approved by school boards, they produced teaching material which was played in classrooms in other countries, etc. - people were doing really impressive things and they put a lot of time into these projects. The problem that people seemed to agree on was that, people were putting a lot of time into the project and it was only worth 15% and at the end of the day, what was produced was NOT evaluated. Really, if you wanted to, you didn't even have to do anything, you just needed to plan to and reflect on it- you didn't need to provide any evidence that you had actually accomplished anything. This was frustrating for people who put a lot of time into the project, because ultimately, the time they put into their assignments didn't really benefit them (in terms of marks). With that being said, the statement of work and reflections were marked really easily, so the 15% was a good way to boost your mark.

The midterms were really hard, had multiple choice, true/false, really short answer, longer short answer and a mini-essay. The tests were long, you had to read the textbook and lecture material (although you could do well without the textbook) but small details were tested and they were just not enjoyable to write. The exam was multiple choice and short answer and it was a little better than the midterms.

All in all, I would only recommend this course if you are really interested in the material because you need to put in a decent amount of time for studying and need to memorize a lot of information for the tests/exam (which I found very difficult considering I wasn't super interested in the material).

I totally agree with what was said about Dr. Khan above. tests averages were in the 60's for midterms and exams. The material itself was not hard, but her tests were so nit-picky that even if you knew everything, missing 1 small insignificant detail in the textbook could make you lose 4 marks on short answer.
i'll give an example.
Dr. Khan showed a 1.5min video in class about Synesthesia, and did not provide the link to the video or any notes about the video after the class. and then she tested us about every detail on that video. aka "what are 2 theories of why synethesia occurs" worth 4/40 marks on the midterm. Another example - we learned about different types of brain imaging (MRI, CAT, PET) - a question on her midterm was "explain the physics behind the BOLD signal and what type of imaging uses this signal" had she have asked what was fMRI and the physics behind that I would have gotten full marks - no problem, however she was so nitpicky that I lost another 4 marks.
Marking scheme is ridiculous.
The course was incredibly interesting, I did learn alot and enjoyed her lectures however, her testing was way too hard.
With a lot of hard work I ended up with an 8. not great, I would not recommend taking this course for a mark booster.