Psyc160 / NSCI 160
The Human Brain, Fall 2024
Preliminary – last revised: 21-July-2024
For more information, please visit the course website:
Instructor:
Gregory McCarthy (Henry Ford II Professor of Psychology)
Office: Room 1279, 100 College Street Building. email: gregory.mccarthy@yale.edu
Teaching Fellows:
The teaching fellows (TFs) are still being assigned and will be announced on the Canvas website when this process is finalized. The fellows will be Psychology and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience (INP) graduate program students.
General Course Information
This course satisfies SC distribution requirements. It is required for the Neuroscience major and for the Neuroscience track within the Psychology major.
There are no prerequisites for this course. However, I will refer to concepts and terminology you encountered in high school biology. I am always happy to unpack unfamiliar terms and concepts.
Course Aims
Weighing only about three pounds, the human brain is the biological substrate of our sensations, movements, language, thoughts, memories, emotions, and conscious awareness. In this course, I will provide a general introduction to the structure and function of the brain.
As the course title states, my focus will be the human brain. However, I will highlight the conserved aspects of brain structure and function across species, and I will frequently use examples from
I will begin by building a foundation of knowledge about brain anatomy and physiology, including neural transmission of information, neurotransmitter systems, and plasticity associated with learning and memory. In successive weeks, I will cover selected topic areas within neuroscience, including sensory and motor processing, hemispheric differences, attention, circadian rhythms for sleep and arousal, stress and emotion, neural control of hunger and satiety, language, memory, decision-making, and social perception.
I will frequently use clinical syndromes and case studies from the neurological and neuropsychological literature, such as blindsight, agnosia, aphasia, and amnesia, and relate those syndromes to functional brain anatomy.
Finally, for many topics, I will include 'news you can use,’ whereby I discuss information gained from current neuroscience research relevant to personal well-being and societal issues.
Course Format
This course will use a lecture + sections format supported by a comprehensive website with course notes, links, and extensive prerecorded videos for each lecture. All class assignments will make use of Canvas.
I am presently updating and editing the course notes. However, I have left the notes from 2022 intact while I work on the 2024 notes in a separate section. You can view the 2022 notes and videos on the course website here.
Lectures:
- Lectures will be held on Tuesday and Thursday from 10 to 11:15 a.m.
- The Registrar has not yet assigned the room for the lecture.
Sections:
- The Human Brain course for Fall 2024 will incorporate weekly Section meetings.
- Sections are capped at 18 students and supervised by a Teaching Fellow. Each section meeting lasts 50 minutes.
- The Section meetings will consist of two activities: (1) a discussion of the muddiest concepts from recent lectures and (2) a quiz on the material from the prior week’s lectures and readings.
Required Course Materials
I provide extensive notes to my lectures that contain links to source material. I expect that you will read these notes in preparation for each class. Most quiz and final exam questions come directly from my notes and lecture slide handouts.
There are also prerecorded videos of the lecture material for each lecture. These are embedded in the course notes at the end of each lecture on the course website. I created these videos in the first year of the pandemic when we pivoted to online instruction. You are more than welcome to view these videos. Indeed, if you are forced to miss class due to illness or quarantine, the videos can help you catch up. However, I do not require that the videos be viewed unless assigned explicitly for a particular lecture. I continually update my lectures and change the order in which I present topics. Thus, my in-class lectures will be the primary content source in Fall 2024.
I am assigning Purves and colleagues, Neuroscience (Sinauer) for which I include readings in the syllabus. Many students find it helpful to comprehensively explain the material I cover in class and find the illustrations and anatomical appendix in the Purves textbook very useful. I ordered copies at the Yale Book Store, but be aware that the book can be ordered or rented online from Amazon and other sellers. Also note that the 6th edition is not the textbook’s most recent version, so many used copies should be available. There is also an electronic or eBook version available. I refer to the textbook in the remainder of this syllabus as PN6.
- Sinauer published the Purves Neuroscience series from editions 1 through 6. Oxford University Press (OUP) purchased Sinauer in 2017. OUP published a 7th edition of the Neuroscience series, which I don’t like as much as the 6th edition. However, if you have the 7th edition, don’t fret; the same material can be found within. However, used copies of the 6th edition are available on Amazon for about $65, while a new copy of the 7th edition is about $180.
If you choose to use an earlier or later edition of the Purves textbook, the readings I recommend may not be in the same place or have the same page numbers as the 6th edition. For example, some chapters in PN6 were essentially unchanged from PN5, while others were significantly revised.
Office hours and review sessions
Each of the teaching fellows will hold regular weekly office hours. I will also offer office hours on Zoom. I will also schedule one or more special review sessions before the final exam, usually during the reading period.
Given the large size of the class, I discourage email for content questions. Please use your Section, the discussion forums, and the TF office hours for questions. Please reserve email communication for personal issues (e.g., illness). If you send me a personal email, please copy the Head TF to ensure a timely response. Like everybody else, I get overwhelmed with emails and sometimes respond slowly.
Grading
- The weekly Section quizzes will be the primary method of assessment.
- The quizzes will consist of questions requiring a short answer (a word, phrase, or 1-2 sentences), a drawing, or diagram labeling.
- The present plan is to administer 12 quizzes and use the top ten scores to calculate your final grade.
- A comprehensive final exam will be held during the final exam period.
- The Registrar sets the final exam date sometime during the first half of the semester.
- The likely breakdown of grades will be as follows: Quizzes 80% and final exam 20% (this breakdown may change slightly before the semester begins).
- You must take the final exam to pass the course (i.e., you cannot opt out because you believe you scored high enough to earn a Cr if taking a Cr/D).
Missed work and makeups.
- Your residential college dean may authorize a “dean’s extension” if you have a valid excuse for missing a weekly quiz (the deans have criteria for judging whether an excuse is valid). You may take a makeup quiz if you have a dean’s extension.
- We will not administer make-up quizzes if you do not have a dean’s extension. In these circumstances, your score will be recorded as a zero. However, since we only use your top ten of twelve quiz scores, you can score two zeros before it affects your final grade.
Final exam
- The final exam will be given on the time and date the Registrar assigns. Be aware of this date when making your travel plans. Please do not ask to take the exam early; that will not be possible. If you are ill on the day of the final exam and have a valid dean’s extension, we might be able to fit in a makeup exam before the exam period ends. This is usually better than the alternative of taking a makeup exam in the spring semester.
Grade distribution
I get many questions about grading and grade distributions. As a rough guide, here is the average grade distribution and range for this course’s three most recent offerings that I taught. Keep in mind that some students elected Cr/D grading and that a few students withdrew from the course. Note that these are averages, and the percentages varied each year, as I do not curve the grades.
A 28
A- 23
B+ 17
B 9
B- 7
C+ 4
C 1
C- 2
D 1
F < 1
Here are the grade cutoffs I plan to use in 2024.
A 93-100
A- 88-91.99
B+ 83-87.99
B 78-82.99
B- 73-77.99
C+ 68-72.99
C 63-67.99
C- 58-62.99
D < 58
F < 50
I reserve the right to change this distribution. There is always the possibility that I misjudged and wrote a final exam that was more difficult than I intended. In that instance, I might change the cutoffs by a point or so to adjust for my misjudgment.
Who should take this course
I do not expect students taking this course to have a prior course in neuroscience, although I will presume some familiarity with elementary concepts from high school biology. I aim to present this material in a manner that is accessible to any student in any major interested in how the brain works.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging
My goal is that this course will serve students from all backgrounds and perspectives. All are welcome. I intend to present materials in a manner that respects diversity, and I believe that the diversity that students bring to this class will be a resource and benefit for all. Please let me know if you have suggestions on how I can improve the effectiveness of my teaching.
Accessibility
If aspects of this course’s instruction or design result in barriers to your inclusion or an accurate assessment of your achievement, please notify me via email or during office hours. Students are also welcome to contact Student Accessibility Services to discuss a range of options for removing barriers in the course, including accommodations.
Online resources
Campus Press course website
I will extensively use my course website, which is located here.
Canvas
Canvas is Yale’s learning management system and is separate from my Campus Press course website. I will use Canvas for announcements and to post readings, PDF versions of the slides, and videos. Please do not redistribute these materials, as they may contain copyrighted images or other content. I also plan to use Canvas to administer the weekly quizzes. So, be sure to bring your laptop to Section.
You are responsible for keeping up with announcements or other course information I provide through Canvas.
Online discussion board
I will set up a discussion forum for this class on Canvas. This has been generally well received as students can pose questions and receive answers from me, the TFs, and fellow students. Students can post their questions publicly, so all other students benefit from the answers. We strongly encourage public posting.
I have found discussion forums to be very efficient means for clarifying concepts and expanding upon explanations offered in lectures. For this reason, the TFs and I work hard to answer these questions. However, please avoid asking simple factual questions that can easily be directed to a search engine (such as Google) or are already plainly answered in the lecture notes, syllabus, or prior forum posts. Please find what is easily found and reserve the discussion forums for more substantive questions.
Class Participation
I have used “Poll Everywhere,” an audience response platform, to have students respond to questions during my lectures using a smartphone app.
When I taught Human Brain in the Fall of 2022, I administered weekly ‘quick quizzes’ consisting only of factual questions or anatomy labeling that can be automatically graded (e.g., multiple choice, true/false, etc.). While the questions were graded, the quiz grade was not entered into a student’s final grade. Instead, students received a half-point of credit simply for taking each quiz and answering all the questions regardless of whether the answers were correct.
So, what is the point of this?
The “quick quiz” was designed to counter the mere familiarity effect. Research has shown that people often overestimate their understanding of the material when they watch a video or listen to a lecture. You probably have had the experience of trying to explain a concept you think you understand well to a friend, only to realize in the middle of your explanation that your grasp of the material is more tenuous than you thought. With the “quick quiz,” you should have a better idea of your understanding on a week-to-week basis without being penalized by a poor grade.
I am unsure if I will utilize the quick quiz in the Fall. I am considering alternatives and will decide by the first class.
How to do well
Class and Section attendance is critical for your success, as my lectures are not based on the textbook. Before class, I post PDFs of my slides plus annotated outlines for the upcoming lecture. Read these outlines and review the slides before coming to class. I also made a series of prerecorded video lectures during the pandemic. I revise my lectures and notes yearly but haven’t created a new video series. Consequently, the videos will gradually become out-of-date. Nevertheless, they remain a good resource.
With these resources, you will know beforehand how I have structured the material and what are the essential points. Have my slide handouts available during class so you can annotate them as I present them. Research has shown that copious verbatim note-taking is an inefficient strategy for learning. Instead, note-taking should engage the material by reformulating and summarizing what I say. I occasionally update my slides and notes just before the lecture, so be alert to emails from Canvas.
