Honestly this class is not as bad as the reviews say!! I think he just had a hard time transitioning with COVID, but taking him in 2021 he got his sh*t together. His lectures were long and they had a lot of info, but his weekly quizzes and tests were open note/book/everything which was super helpful for this course. FOR THIS COURSE YOU NEED OPEN BOOK!! I also took Kennedy's 115 and failed with a D- because she used respondus and her tests were crazy hard. I really do recommend taking this class with him over anyone else!!

This was one of the most interesting classes I've taken at UCLA so far; there are so many (negative :( ) reviews detailing how overwhelming and disorganized the content is, but I think that's just the inherent nature of the class & its curriculum. With that being said, these reviews aren't wrong—there really is a very wide range of topics crammed into 10 mere weeks. HOWEVER, Avi did a really great job at breaking down these concepts and providing insightful examples that helped with my understanding. He always began the weekly lectures with big-picture ideas and concepts and broke them down into their respective neurological mechanisms. Additionally, the workload for this class was SUPER manageable: 0 homework assignments, 7 quizzes (2 were dropped), and 2 exams (1 midterm & 1 final). I didn't have to worry about any busy work at all; all I had to do was to watch/attend lectures and to take the weekly quiz when the time came—super simple and straightforward. I cannot say more good things about this class!

Other bonuses: Avi's also super funny (both intentionally and unintentionally). He would physically act out his examples and it made class just that much more pleasant to be in. You can see that he really does love what he does & knows a lot about it. I would LOVE to take more classes with him with the future but there really aren't that many undergraduate courses offered :(.

TLDR: great professor, super funny & engaging, loved the way he structured the lectures, loved the workload and thought it was very effective & fair.

I was really nervous coming into this class because I do not have a strong background in science, especially in neuroscience. However, Prof Avi made the material accessible! He posts pre-recorded lectures (each around 1 hour and 15 mins long) along with slides and relevant chapters of the textbook. He encourages asking questions on the discussion forum and attending office hours as well as in-person lectures. Personally, I found the in-person lectures nice so that I can get a quick recap about the lectures and add to my notes. During lectures Prof Avi is funny and includes pop-culture references (ex: star wars, power puff girls, etc). Also, I highly recommend going to the optional discussion sections b/c the jeopardy gives you a gauge of what you know / need to review. The weekly quizzes (6 questions and 12 minutes timed) and exams (50 questions w/ 2 hours and 3-4 extra credit questions as a buffer) were fair! The material can be dense, but if you take detailed notes on the lectures, review the lecture slides, and do the jeopardies then you will be solid! Overall, I really enjoyed this class!!

P.S. highly recommend going to his office hours at least once.. his office has some pretty cool Beatles memorabilia!

This class is cakewalk compared to the other two in the series. The professors for this course are Wassum, Adhikari, and Suthana (in that order).

Wassum's module is all about motivation - why we do what we do. And she explores this topic through hunger and reward-seeking behaviors which she maps to brain circuitry from a buttload of mice/rat experiments. All of her slides are just figures of graphs and a lot of them say the same in thing in different ways, which is core part of behavioral neuroscience - converging evidence is IMPORTANT!

Adhikari is hands-down the BEST neuroscience professor in the department. He cracks jokes so frequently it sometimes feels you're watching a stand-up comedian, rather than a lecture, which makes it super engaging. His module covers long-term potentiation and depression (LTP/LTD), a lot of stuff on memory (Patient H.M.), you dive into the circuitry and cell types of the hippocampus (trisynaptic circuit, place cells, etc.) - and again all of this is through many, many experiments that have been done on rats.

Suthana is also a really sweet professor (she was an undergrad here and did her PhD here, as well) and her module is on cognitive neuroscience. You go through all the different techniques used in Cog Neuro, like fMRI, EEGs, single-neuron electrodes, etc. And you learn about experiments using each of these, and their pros and cons. I found this one the least interesting, because it was too computational for my liking at times, but that's what CogNeuro is all about and it was cool to see a different side of neuroscience than previously seen.

The class is structured as such:
- 75% Exams (25% each module) - each exam is 30 MC with 1-2 bonus points. They also give practice MC questions that are very similar if not the same prior to the exam (this was nice because 101A/B didn't do that)
- 20% Weekly Write-Ups - you have a research paper assigned each week to write about in a creative way (this can be like a blog post, Twitter thread, or press release) and you just summarize the experiments done in the paper and tie it back to lecture that week (lowest TWO are dropped)
- 5% Clinical Correlation - lowest one is dropped so you can just skip one of the two offered.

It's SUPER easy to do well in this class, the test are fair, there's EC, and it's overall such a confidence boost, if you're like me and didn't do so hot in 101B.

He is a great professor. He is one of the most understanding and organized professors I have ever had. Ignore the negative comments. He is great!

THERE IS SOOOO MUCH INFO. The worse and worse it gets over the quarter, try and do really well on your first and second midterm. Write down EVERYTHING he says on your cheat sheet and really study your cheat sheet so during the test you know where to find the exact answer.

Good luck! #takeitoversummer

You really need to put in the work for this class. The only thing that saved me were the 2 cheat sheets (front and back, can be printed) per exam. Not only did I attend every lecture, but I also watched each of his recorded online lectures too. I wrote down quite literally everything he said and every word on the slides.I got a 92% on the first midterm, 96% on the second midterm, 90% for the quiz category, 78% on the final, and I didn't even get an A.
I will say def take this professor over the others solely because of his cheat sheet allowance, which comes in so much handy if you utilize it correctly

Slides were numerous and dense. Prof Adhikari was generally a good lecturer with a sense of humor, but sometimes struggled to keep me engaged due to the quantity and complexity of the material. Overall, I'm happy I took this course for the Psych Category A requirement, but I'm also glad to be done with it.

The grade was split between weekly quizzes, 2 midterms, and a final. All multiple choice. The weekly quizzes were generally free points since they were open note. 2 page double-sided notes were permitted for exams.

Avi is the goat!! This is a super interesting class, and he does an amazing job keeping all of the lectures engaging (he really likes doing rat impressions :) You learn a LOT in this class, and I loved it. By nature, the material is very dense--it might not look like it with only ~20-40 slides or so per lecture, but it is (some slides have a lot of text + images/diagrams). With that being said, the class structure is very low maintenance; in our quarter, all we had were 7 weekly quizzes (lowest 2 dropped) and 3 midterm-length exams. No reading or additional assignments!

I would, however, steer away from calling this an "easy" class. If this class is taught in-person, the Winter 2023 reviews and Winter 2021 grade distribution are not representative of how people generally perform. The exams are very doable--you get two pages of cheat sheets and the medians for each were around a B- (exam 1), B (exam 2), and A- (exam 3). While these are typical psych department averages, you do not have much padding for your grade aside from the quizzes. It is not too difficult to get a decent grade in the class, but to get a solid A you need to be consistently scoring at least in the upper quartile on the quizzes and exams. Overall though, you should be perfectly fine if you leave yourself time to study instead of cram. You really do have to earn EVERY point in this class, but ultimately you come out of it with an extremely rewarding experience.

I'm really sad that Avi doesn't teach more psych classes :( I would love to take another course with him! If you're willing to put in the work and find nervous system anatomy interesting, I highly recommend taking this course!

This class was a breeze. Study the lecture slides and you’re guaranteed an A. (NOTE: Tests are no longer online! The professor does allow up to two, double-sided, sheets of paper for a cheat sheet for midterms and the final).