Lecture: Wed. & Fri., 10:00-10:50 - Lecture Hall 125, Level 1, Phase 2

Labs: Wed. 1:00-2:50 or 3:00-4:50 - MDL-2, Level 1, Phase 2 (note that labs are not held every Wednesday, so check your class schedules)

Strongly recommended readings from:

Textbook of Veterinary Physiology, 4 th edition, by Cunningham & Klein. Saunders/Elsevier, 2007.

No text is required for the course.  However, I have provided (see below) short strongly recommended reading assignments, from the above text, for most of the topics covered in the course.  The majority of the readings are only about five pages long.  The readings are simply for your benefit but are not required.  However, I think you will find them very helpful since I have co-authored the chapters and I have tried to tailor them toward much of what is covered in lecture.  This is a resource that might be useful if you miss something I said in class (could happen).  However, there is not an exact correspondence between the lecture and the readings, so you may wind up learning some useful supplemental information from the readings that might help put the lecture material in perspective.  Several copies of the book are on reserve in the Veterinary Medicine library.  Please feel free to let me know how you feel about the utility of the readings throughout the semester.

Here is a list of those lecture topics that have a recommended reading assignment:

General Nervous System Organization and Nomenclature – Chapter 3 Introduction to the Nervous System

Neurophysiology – Chapter 4 The Neuron

Neurochemistry – Chapter 5 The Synapse

Somatosensory System – Chapter 7 The Concept of a Reflex

Visual System – Chapter 14 The Visual System (duh!)

Auditory System – Chapter 17 Hearing

Motor System (OK, this is a long one) - Chapter 9 The Concept of Upper and Lower Motor Neurons and Their Malfunction; Chapter 10 The Central Control of Movement

Vestibular System – Chapter 11 The Vestibular System (another duh)

The Meninges, Ventricles and Cerebrospinal Fluid – Chapter 15 Cerebrospinal Fluid and the Blood-Brain Barrier

Autonomic Nervous system – Chapter 13 The Autonomic Nervous System and Adrenal Medulla

 
Other reference texts :

Whether or not you do the ‘Strongly Recommended Readings’ discussed above, you may thirst for more, or desire further explanation.  These reference texts should provide ample clarification of any topics that you might have extra difficulty with.  Text #1 covers almost all topics in this course at just about the right level of sophistication.  It has some really cool little tidbits as well, such as interesting neuroscience anecdotes relating to everyday life, nice illustrations and some descriptions by current day neurobiologists regarding the unusual circumstances that led to some important discoveries.  Text #2 is more clinically-oriented than Text #1 and focuses on human.  Although the level of anatomical coverage is often more than is necessary for this course, the book deals nicely with many topics we discuss and it has good diagrams of neural pathways.  Text #3, like Text #1, seems about the right level of complexity, but is not quite as eye-catching as Text #1.  It is the most recently published of all these texts.  Text #4, like Text #1, is very nicely illustrated, but it is just a bit more complex than Texts #1 and #3.  Text #5 is another popular veterinary physiology textbook that presents a few topics from the course at a somewhat more complex level compared to Cunningham and Klein.  However, Text #5 contains two chapters (43 & 44) written by yours truly that deals with material from lectures 2 through 4.  Text #6 is quite comprehensive and may be a bit more detailed than the other texts.  A few copies of Texts #1 through #4, and #6, should be on reserve for this course in the Veterinary Medicine Library.  The others, if not on reserve for this course, should be on permanent reserve.

1. Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain by Bear, Connors & Paradiso.  Williams & Wilkins, 2006 (third edition).

2. Fundamental Neuroscience for Basic and Clinical Applications by Haines.  Churchill Livingstone, 2006 (third edition).

3. The Central Nervous System: Structure and Function by Brodal.  Oxford University Press, 2010 (fourth edition).

4. Neuroscience by Purves, Augustine, Fitzpatrick, Hall, LaMantia, McNamara and White.  Sinauer Associates, Inc., 2007 (fourth edition).

5. Dukes' Physiology of Domestic Animals by Reece.  Cornell University Press, 2004 (twelfth edition); Chapters 43 and 44 by B.G. Klein.

6. Fundamental Neuroscience (yes, similar title to #3) by Squire, Bloom, Spitzer, du Lac, Ghosh & Berg.  Academic Press, 2008 (third edition).

Required handouts:

There will be a few short handouts that I will give you during the semester that you will be required to read.  Some of these are already included in your course notes.  Some material from the handouts will be covered on exams.

Examinations:

Lecture (72% of course grade)

 Take-home quizzes (6% of course grade, total) - Each week, after Friday’s lecture, I will post (late afternoon) a take-home quiz on Scholar (more about Scholar later).  The quiz will be comprised of 4 to 6 short answer questions that will be drawn from the material covered on that Friday and the prior Wednesday.  It may also cover material from any special-interest handouts that were associated with those lectures.  You will take and submit the quiz on-line (see brief instructions in this handout) and you will have until the beginning of class on the following Friday to submit it.  The rationale behind this is as follows: 1) It will help you keep up with the material so that when exam time rolls around you are not totally swamped.  2) In keeping up with the material you will find subsequent lectures easier to understand.  3) It will render a cumulative final unnecessary.  Instead, the learning process will be more effectively distributed over the course of the semester.  The quiz is open-book but it must, according to the Honor Code, be done on your own.

 Exam 1 (closed-book in-library exam, 33% of course grade) – to be taken in Veterinary Medicine Library 4/8/2011 through closing on 4/18/2011.  The exam will cover lecture material from General Nervous System Organization & Nomenclature up through and including Visual System 1.

 Exam 2 (in-class exam, 33% of course grade) – 5/6/2011, covering lecture material from Visual System 2 up through and including the last day of class.  This exam will not be cumulative (yeah!).

 Lecture exams will be short answer (primarily multiple choice and fill-in).  Your class notes contain a set of study questions for each topic, drawn from the lecture material.  You will probably find them helpful in studying for the exams.

 
Laboratory (28% of course grade)

 Lab Exam 1 (11% of course grade) – 4/6/2011, covering Overview of Brain 1 Lab up to and including Cranial Nerves & Somatosensory System Lab.

 Lab Exam 2 (17% of course grade) – 5/6/2011, covering Special Senses Lab up to and including lab on last day of class.

 Laboratory exams will primarily involve identification of nervous system elements presented in brain specimens or cross-sectional photographs of the brain.  Some questions may incorporate basic principles covered in lecture.