The class is ok
It was interesting at first but then it got boring because it was mainly just focusing on very particular topics from papers. The lab portion is so annoying because you have to learn how to use Matlab. To sum it up, I got to the point where I just wanted the class to be over already.

The whole class felt disorganized and tough. There were only 3 homeworks given when we thought we’d get weekly homework’s. EVERYTHING on all slides are fair game on exams, and there’s a LOT of information.

The class touches on a very interesting topic. I'm generally interested in the material. I did not like the matlab portion though as much, since my programming experience was with c++. If you are good at matlab, u should give this class a try. The assignments were graded really late, I wish they could be done earlier. TA is very helpful, and I hope he will have more office hours.

The project assigned to graduate students only was very unclear. He decided to let us know about project through a zoom call on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He said he would make accommodations but he didn't. On finals week he announced that grad students will be presenting their project on the first day of Spring Quarter despite being a Winter Quarter class. It's unfair he can constantly disregard grad students personal time and not make accommodations for the students when he stated he would. He doesn't even respond to emails and the TA responded incredibly late as well. Pretty smart of them to do all this after the instructor evaluations are already over. Professor and TA also really didn't care about the class.

The class was interesting at the beginning, but then it gradually got worse towards the end. The topics became boring and the class got really unorganized.

It was weird that he taught MATLAB, but we only had one homework and one midterm question about the syntax of MATLAB. We didn't actually have to write MATLAB code for homework like he stated he would assign us to have. He frequently talked about what's going to be on the next assignment and then never assigns it.

Also It really bugged me that during the week before finals (around 3-4 days before), he last minute decided to post another lecture and have another homework assignment due. He should at least post it earlier.

Overall easy A if you like an uncaring and unorganized professor that curves.

Mehta is not a good professor in a setting where the exams are what determine your final grade. His strength is conceptually talking about things like a Tedtalk (which is funny because he links his Tedtalk everywhere). I tried to give him a chance even after reading all the reviews, but the reality of this class is that Mehta sets you up to fail the tests by not spending time working through the math in lectures. I think he thought that covering a topic made it okay to test us on it, but that didn't work out because we weren't tested on what he spent most of his time talking about. The average for both midterms was a failing grade (like 60-something and 50-something respectively), and only 1 or 2 kids in each midterm would finish early out of the entire class.

Sidenote: Much appreciation to the discussion section TA Andrew for basically running the whole class. Also, shoutout to the lab TA Vince for being the most unengaged, uninterested, and condescending TA I've had at UCLA. What a quarter.

Other sidenote on the phone thing: Mehta will completely disrupt whatever he's teaching whenever he sees a kid on their phone, which stems from some control thing he has going on. Not saying kids should be on their phones, but they are only hurting themselves by not paying attention (sorta) and Mehta chooses to punish the whole class because of one or two students.

**This is the only time I've written a review on here so sorry if it's too long, but there's just so much to say about this class.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH THIS PROFESSOR EVER!!!!!! I have never had an exam where I literally feel like I can't answer the questions and need to leave things blank. The format of his midterms are absolutely BRUTAL for 50 minutes (4 MCQ and 6 IN DEPTH FRQ) and NO ONE finishes on time or early. This specific quarter he told the TA that he was going to drop our lowest midterm score (oh wow yay)...JUST KIDDING!! He changed his mind after the TA told all of us and then made the next midterm twice as hard as the first. Not to mention, he doesn't even come to class on midterm days, it's just the TA, he KNOWS how hard he makes them and avoids the confrontations with students by claiming "he is sick" (he was sick on both midterm days, never others). This was also the quarter of the fires in LA and he had NO SYMPATHY of any of the students impacted. Before taking the first midterm (week 3), I had been physically in person for 3 classes total because we were online for the rest of the weeks. Not to mention "online" meant his lecture recordings from 2020 so you can't ask questions or get any sort of help from him. HE WILL CALL YOU OUT IN CLASS IF YOU EVEN GLANCE AT YOUR PHONE AND WILL THREATEN TO KICK YOU OUT!!!!!! I honestly have never had a professor at UCLA like this and it is VERY disappointing that this man is still able to teach at this school. We pay so much money to get our education and unfortunately professors like this do NOT teach and do NOT care about your learning. DO BETTER UCLA

Do NOT let the grade distribution fool you. Don't even let my grade fool you. This class was the most unorganized disaster I have ever been subject to at UCLA. I took this class anticipating electrophysiology (and because it was the only option that fit my schedule), and was surprised to hear on the first day that it was supposed to actually be about brain machine interfaces, AI, etc. Somehow, it was actually neither of those two things. We never actually talked about technology in this class apart from the intro lecture, and never really covered electrophysiology either. Instead, it was a poorly blended version of neuro 101C and the profs own studies, all presented in a convoluted way that was very difficult to track with. There were supposed to be weekly homework assignments, but when he assigned the first one, we were all surprised to find that it was an extremely complicated coding assignment...when this class said no coding experience required. It took us five weeks of complaining for the prof to finally do something about it, and his solution was to extend the deadline because apparently, this class was supposed to have a weekly discussion section...and the department had forgotten to schedule one. So instead of making any efforts to post recorded discussions, have a zoom option, etc., he just kept cancelling homeworks and swearing that by the time it was due, we would have learned how to do all of the coding. When it was finally due week 7, we still had not learned an ounce of code. It was never even mentioned. The only resource we ever received was a powerpoint of tips in Matlab. Which would probably have been more helpful if the assignment wasn't in Python.

So, instead of having weekly homework assignments to cushion our grades, we now have three. The midterm rolls around, and figuring out what on earth we were actually even responsible for knowing was half the battle. The recorded lectures posted were from 2020, and most no longer even correlated properly with what we were going over. The slides were also worthless, as his entire three hour lecture would go over 10-12 slides that were just graphs. No titles, no context, half the time there weren't even axis labels. The TA clearly had no idea what we were even going over in this class, as he was never in lecture and everything he went over in the "review session" had nothing to do with the tests. He swore up and down that it would be purely conceptual, and then we get to the midterm and most of the questions are ridiculous things like "how many micrometers is a dendrite." The midterm was 18 multiple choice, true false questions. The best part? If you got the question right, it was +1. If you got it wrong, it was -2, making the minimum score on the test a -14/22. The TA seemed to have no idea what the grading policy was, as the whole thing got so screwed up that the points didn't even all add up to 22. It was unfairly and unjustly graded--I missed four questions and got a 59. Several people in the class submitted regrades asking for more points simply for the reason of "I feel that this is unfair and deserve a higher score," and got a bunch of free extra points back for no reason. I submitted the SAME regrade request (they helped me word it like they did), and the TA refused to give back any points. One student missed half of the questions but got an A because the TA straight up forgot to factor the marked off questions into his final grade. There was never a right or wrong answer, as many of the questions weren't even written properly and had mistakes in them. When asked during the exams, the TA said to just mark what you thought and if you got marked wrong, it was your responsibility to find a study on the Internet that proved your point and use that to argue for your points back.

You weren't allowed to email the professor, you had to go through the TA. Who rarely answered on time. The professor did not have office hours, and the TA wouldn't show up to his. Getting help in this class was impossible, not that it would have helped in the end anyways.

The TA showed up 15 minutes late to the final holding four copies of the test. Apparently the printer had jammed? So everyone else was just told to get out their laptops and "don't cheat, just have one tab open." Which would have been easier to enforce if the TA didn't keep periodically leaving the room for extended periods of time during the final.

Overall, I never received a grade for the three homework assignments or final. I don't know if this is because they were graded and just not inputted into Canvas/Gradescope, but we were explicitly told that we could submit regrades on the final afterwards, which apparently is not the case. So I have no idea if I actually deserved the A I got in this class, considering I have basically no metric of even gauging how I did in the class the entire quarter.

If you're looking to take this class because you want an easy, free-A GPA booster elective, don't. All it was the entire quarter was a battle against the grading policies. If you're looking to take this class because you're interested in computational neuro, still don't. Take the Intro to Computational Neuroscience class instead. Avoid this mess at all costs.

ik i'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. but please. STEER CLEAR!!!!!!!! STAY AWAY!!!!!!!!

Worst class ever! Professor simply read from the Pearson slides, didn't even know when there was an exam, constantly changed class policies. Would strongly recommend against taking this class.