Using BioRender for Active Learning: Exploring Learning-Style Preference and Visual-Spatial Ability in Undergraduate Students.

Visual-spatial reasoning has been considered a predictor of performance success in STEM courses, including engineering, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. Little is known, however, about whether visual-spatial ability predicts success for non-STEM students in general education neuroscience courses. In the following study, we investigate how scores on tests of visual-spatial object rotation relate to student performance on illustrative and content exams in a large non-major undergraduate neuropharmacology course. To help students understand content visually, the course provided students with homework assignments that allowed them to create illustrations of lecture content using the online scientific illustration software, BioRender. Findings suggest that percent completion of BioRender assignments was a greater predictor of student performance than tests of innate visual-spatial ability. In addition, we show that visual learning style preference was not correlated with visual-spatial ability, as measured by the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test-Visualization of Rotations. Neither did learning style preference predict student success. The following paper suggests practice illustrating neuroscience concepts, or perhaps content practice in general, had a greater impact on student learning independent of learning style preference or innate visual-spatial ability.

Primary Literature In Clinical Neuroscience for In-Person Or Remote Instruction.

Structure and function relationships in the nervous system are a major component of neuroscience education. Readings and/or discussion of lesion studies in animal models are often used to demonstrate how brain injury/damage affects specific behaviors or cognitive processes. In contrast, primary literature in clinical neuroscience is less often used to teach brain structure and function relationships and this literature often describes remarkable stories of preserved brain function despite major brain injury/lesion. Here we describe a series of published articles in clinical neuroscience that we used in an undergraduate neuroscience course that challenge the simplistic views of brain localization of function and demonstrate the dynamic and plastic properties of the brain. Discussion of these primary articles can take place in-person or remote via video conferencing platforms.

Don't Believe the Gripe! Increasing Course Structure in a Large Non-majors Neuroscience Course.

Active teaching is increasingly accepted as a better option for higher education STEM courses than traditional lecture-based instruction. However, concerns remain regarding student preferences and the impact of increased course structure on teaching evaluations. Undergraduates in a non-majors neuropharmacology course were enrolled in an enriched blended course format, providing online case-based learning opportunities in a large lecture hall setting. Students working in small assigned groups solved weekly case studies developed to teach basic neuropharmacology concepts. All case study assignments were peer reviewed and content was further reinforced with a weekly online quiz. A comparison of scores on equivalent midterm and final exam questions revealed that students enrolled in the High-Structure course scored better than students from the previous year that took a more traditional Low-Structure lecture-based course. Student performance increased significantly for exam questions that required Bloom's level understanding. When surveyed, students in the High-Structure course reported some regret for the lack of traditional lecture and revealed some disapproval towards the extra work required for active teaching and peer review. Yet, we saw no change in quantitative instructor evaluation between sections, challenging the idea that student resistance towards increased work lowers course evaluation scores. Future instructors using active learning strategies may benefit from revealing to students the value of increased course structure on performance outcomes compared with traditional lecture courses.

Drugs & the Brain: Case-based Instruction for an Undergraduate Neuropharmacology Course.

In order to transform a traditional large non-majors general education (GE) neurobiology lecture (Drugs & the Brain) into an active learning course, we developed a series of directed mini-cases targeting major drug classes. Humorous and captivating case-based situations were used to better engage and motivate students to solve problems related to neuropharmacology and physiology. Here we provide directed cases, questions and learning outcomes for our opiates mini-cases. In addition, we describe how case studies were incorporated into our course and assessed using peer review and online quizzing. An in-depth analysis of the overall course transformation on student exam performance, opinions and instructor evaluations can be found in the JUNE article Don't Believe the Gripe! Increasing Course Structure in a Large Non-majors Neuroscience Course.

Front and Back Flipping for Neurobiology! Developing a Hybrid Upper-Division Lab Course.

Flipped instruction using online enrichment is a popular way to enhance active learning in the laboratory setting. Graduate student teaching assistants at University of California, Irvine flipped an upper division undergraduate neurobiology and behavior lab using the new online software platform "Rocketmix." The following research study compares the impact of pre-lab online instruction (front flipping) and post-lab online instruction (back flipping) on student exam performance. We describe a novel method for unbiased categorization of exam questions by degree of difficulty. Multi-choice instruction encourages students to consider all distractors and discourages verbal cues and process of elimination techniques. Eighteen identical questions were evenly distributed across exam versions with multiple choice instruction (single answer) or a more challenging multi-choice instruction (more than one answer). Student performance on multiple choice questions were used to categorize the degree of difficulty of questions that were presented in multi-choice format. Our findings reveal that pre-lab instruction resulted in better student performance compared with post-lab instruction on questions of moderate difficulty. This effect was significant for both male and female students. Student survey data on the flipped lab format is provided, indicating that students appreciated the online instructional modules, finding them both informative and useful during lab exercises and exams.

Stress and glucocorticoids promote oligodendrogenesis in the adult hippocampus.

Stress can exert long-lasting changes on the brain that contribute to vulnerability to mental illness, yet mechanisms underlying this long-term vulnerability are not well understood. We hypothesized that stress may alter the production of oligodendrocytes in the adult brain, providing a cellular and structural basis for stress-related disorders. We found that immobilization stress decreased neurogenesis and increased oligodendrogenesis in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the adult rat hippocampus and that injections of the rat glucocorticoid stress hormone corticosterone (cort) were sufficient to replicate this effect. The DG contains a unique population of multipotent neural stem cells (NSCs) that give rise to adult newborn neurons, but oligodendrogenic potential has not been demonstrated in vivo. We used a nestin-CreER/YFP transgenic mouse line for lineage tracing and found that cort induces oligodendrogenesis from nestin-expressing NSCs in vivo. Using hippocampal NSCs cultured in vitro, we further showed that exposure to cort induced a pro-oligodendrogenic transcriptional program and resulted in an increase in oligodendrogenesis and decrease in neurogenesis, which was prevented by genetic blockade of glucocorticoid receptor (GR). Together, these results suggest a novel model in which stress may alter hippocampal function by promoting oligodendrogenesis, thereby altering the cellular composition and white matter structure.

Behavioral assessment of soft skill development in a highly structured pre-health biology course for undergraduates.

In this study, we assessed a highly structured, yearlong, case-based course designed for undergraduate pre-health students. We incorporated both content learning assessments and developed a novel method called Multiple Mini Exams for assessing course impact on the development of skills that professional schools often seek in pre-health students, focusing on students' abilities to collaborate with others, display bedside manners, synthesize patient case details, appropriately use scientific and medical language, and effectively attain patients' medical histories. This novel method utilized a rubric based on desired medical student skills to score videotaped behaviors and interactions of students role playing as doctors in a hypothetical patient case study scenario. Overall, our findings demonstrate that a highly structured course, incorporating weekly student performance and presentation of patient cases encompassing history taking, diagnosis, and treatment, can result in content learning, as well as improve desired skills specific for success in medical fields.

Enhancing cognition after stress with gene therapy.

Hippocampal function is essential for the acquisition, consolidation, and retrieval of spatial memory. High circulating levels of glucocorticoids (GCs), the adrenal steroid hormones secreted during stress, have been shown to impair both acquisition and retrieval and can either impair or enhance consolidation, depending on experimental conditions. In contrast, estrogen can enhance spatial memory performance and can block the deleterious effects of GCs on such performance. We therefore constructed a chimeric gene ("ER/GR") containing the hormone-binding domain of the GC receptor and the DNA binding domain of the estrogen receptor; as a result, ER/GR transduces deleterious GC signals into beneficial estrogenic ones. We show here that acute immobilization stress, before acquisition and retrieval phases, increases latencies for male rats in a hidden platform version of the Morris water maze. This impairment is blocked by hippocampal expression of the ER/GR transgene. ER/GR expression also blocks decreases in platform crossings caused by acute stress, either after acquisition or before retrieval. Three days of stress before acquisition produces an estrogen-like enhancement of performance in ER/GR-treated rats. Moreover, ER/GR blocks the suppressive effects of GCs on expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a growth factor central to hippocampal-dependent cognition and plasticity, instead producing an estrogenic increase in BDNF expression. Thus, ER/GR expression enhances spatial memory performance and blocks the impairing effects of GCs on such performance.

Ambient temperature influences core body temperature response in rat lines bred for differences in sensitivity to 8-hydroxy-dipropylaminotetralin.

Agonist-induced decrease in core body temperature has commonly been used as a measure of serotonin1A (5-HT(1A)) receptor sensitivity in mood disorder. The thermoregulatory basis for 5-HT(1A) receptor agonist-induced temperature responses in humans and rats remains unclear. Therefore, the influence of ambient temperature on 5-HT(1A) receptor-mediated decreases in core body temperature were measured in rat lines bred for high (HDS) or low (LDS) sensitivity to the selective 5-HT(1A) receptor agonist 8-hydroxy-dipropylaminotetralin (8-OH-DPAT). HDS and LDS rats were injected with either saline, 0.25 or 0.50 mg/kg 8-OH-DPAT at ambient temperatures of 10.5, 24, 30, or 37.5 degrees C, and core temperature was measured by radiotelemetry. For both lines, the thermic response to acute 8-OH-DPAT was greatest at 10.5 degrees C and decreased in magnitude as ambient temperature increased to 30 degrees C, consistent with hypothermia. HDS rats displayed a greater hypothermic response than LDS rats at 10.5, 24, and 30 degrees C. At 37.5 degrees C, LDS rats showed a lethal elevation of temperature in response to 0.50 mg/kg 8-OH-DPAT. All thermic responses to 8-OH-DPAT, including the lethality, were effectively blocked by pretreatment with the 5-HT(1A) receptor antagonist WAY100635, suggesting line differences in thermoregulatory circuits that are influenced by 5-HT(1A) receptor activation. Following repeated injection of 8-OH-DPAT, the magnitude of the hypothermic response decreased in both lines at 10.5 degrees C, but increased in HDS rats treated with 0.50 mg/kg 8-OH-DPAT at 30 and 37.5 degrees C. This pattern was reversed in HDS rats following 8-OH-DPAT challenge at 24 degrees C, suggesting that a compensatory thermoregulatory response accounts for changes in the hypothermic response to chronic 8-OH-DPAT.