Preparing for Neuro

[lovepixie]

Hello all,

Next semester, my school begins neuroscience. I have heard nothing but bad things about the course. Any advice on how you studied, resources, or anything that helped you along the way?

 

[PTMattI]

Just put your hard hat on and go to work.
There are plenty of resources out there, but ultimately its just going to take some studying in learning all the tracks, anatomy and cranial nerves as well as all the different conditions.

It may help combining studying the didactic knowledge with practical skills...ie when learning the cranial nerves also go over how to do the cranial nerve exam. Might help that knowledge stick better.

 

[Azimuthal]

Use active studying versus passive. There is a lot of good information.

 

[starrsgirl]

I would honestly start with a basic intro course if you haven't had anything. I had ZERO exposure to the brain pre neuro and that was tough. If you could at least get the lobes, very general functions of them, general anatomy class of where they are and general overview of blood supply you will be ready to go (don't forget the brain stem). If you have had that before, then just plan to study every night for it. Get the extra text books or a highly recommended one for home study. Get a white board to draw/write it all out. Study with some buddies.

 

[PT2Bee]

if you take anything away from intro neuro, take away the cranial nerves (what they do and how to objectively test their function) and brain blood supply for strokes (and their expected manifestations like hemiplegia, speech, etc.). Stuff that gave me trouble like tracks and pathways is stuff that I haven't used since I was tested on them. Neuro interventions will be another good class. People make neuro out to be way worse than it is. At the end of the day, if you have a parkinson or TBI patient, you treat based on symptoms and deficiencies/dysfunctions. I never once sat there during my clinical and thought "hmm, so the brain pathway for this is...." because it doesn't matter. You treat what you see. But just my opinion, I'm sure some will disagree.

 

[jjjDPT]

Just know your learning style (auditory, visual, kinesthetic, read/write) and study accordingly (listen to recorded lectures, read lecture handouts and textbook, read notes and rewrite them, etc).