Format
The final exam will be closed-book and will be taken during the final exam period. The time and location of the final exam is determined by the University Registrar’s office, and will occur on Saturday, December 17th at 9:00 AM. You must take the final exam to pass the course. I cannot excuse you from taking the final exam — if you cannot sit for the final exam, you must obtain an ABX grade from your residential college dean. I will not be offering an early exam so please do not make travel or other plans that precludes your attendance at the final exam.
The exam will draw from all 26 lectures. There may be slightly more questions from the final lectures for which there were no question sets assigned. The final exam for 2022 will consist of the following:
- short-answer questions
- anatomical labeling of drawings
- functional anatomical labeling of drawings
- neuropsychological deficits
I will ~not~ use multiple choice or true/false questions, as psychological research has demonstrated that the incorrect alternatives can interfere with retention of the correct answers.
I have reluctantly decided against including the long-form essay questions I have used in prior semesters. While essays are ideal for testing concepts and processes, they are difficult to grade under the best of circumstances. Grading issues are exacerbated for a large class such as ours, given the short period between our final exam and when grades are due to the registrar.
Short-answer questions
The short-answer questions will be similar to the questions you have been answering each week in the question sets (qSets). My goal is to write questions that test your understanding of the concepts taught and to avoid questions that are simple definitions.
Anatomical labeling of drawings
There will be blank brain and spinal cord images for which you will be asked to label some parts with anatomical labels. For example, you might be asked to label lobes of the brain (e.g., frontal), or specific gyri (e.g., cingulate gyrus), or structures (e.g., amygdala), or pathways (e.g., optic tract, dorsal columns).
Functional anatomical labeling of drawings
Using the same kind of blank brain drawings as described above, you will be asked to label some brain parts with functional anatomical labels (e.g., Broca’s area), or to label a brain area based upon a described functional finding (e.g., where would a lesion produce an aphasia in which auditory comprehension is preserved, but in which speech production is slow and halting, and consists primarily of verbs and nouns without grammatical connectives?).
Neuropsychological syndromes
One type of question that I will ask that borders on definitional is related to neuropsychological syndromes (e.g., prosopagnosia, semantic dementia). These questions may pose a syndrome and request a definition (e.g., what is prosopagnosia?) or may pose a syndrome and ask for its name (e.g., a difficulty in face recognition is called?).
How to prepare for the final exam
What to prioritize
Prioritize the material I provided for each lecture; namely, the slide handouts and the online lecture notes. Use as guides for importance the goals enumerated at the beginning of each lecture’s course notes, and the headings that mark each section within those notes. Remember where I put my emphasis during the lectures.
Remember that I also assigned ‘off-line’ mini-lectures (e.g., blood supply, and brain structure-function). I did not assign the mini-lecture on white matter, but I do expect you to know what white matter is (as opposed to gray matter, for example), and to know the major tracts that were emphasized in lecture (such as the corpus callosum).
I did assign the mini-lecture on Methods, but the lecture notes provide more technical detail about the methods than I expect you to know. For this lecture, stick to the main points (e.g., correlation vs. causality, temporal and spatial resolution) and know what MRI, EEG, and TMS are. Do not worry about anything in this lecture that pertains to how these methods work (e.g., back-projection, summated EPSPs, etc).
If you missed a lecture, then you should view the videos from that lecture. All lecture videos were added to the course notes.
What not to prioritize
I will not be asking questions on material covered in the textbook that was ~not~ included in a lecture or course notes. The textbook was intended as a resource to fill out your understanding of material that I presented in lecture or course notes, but for which I did not have time to go into sufficient detail. A good example of that use was localizing sounds in space, which is well covered in the textbook and for which I had only limited time to review in lecture. If there is material in my lecture notes that you do not understand, then by all means read the associated material in the textbook. However, don’t worry about detailed or esoteric material presented in the textbook that was not mentioned in class or course notes.
How to get help
Take advantage of the TF’s office hours and look for special office hours during the reading period.
Use Ed Discussion on Canvas.
I will also be holding structured review sessions that will be well advertised. I will try to record these review sessions, but be aware that the recording process is not fool proof, and that it may be difficult to hear questions from the class that I answer (I try to remember to repeat the question, but I sometimes forget).
