He is so smart and expects everyone to be at his level and that makes his lectures hard to understand. This professor was the most understanding Neuroscience professor ever. His exam was fair, and his quizzes were clear. The biggest reason for this review is to emphasize that he was the only understanding Neuro professor during this pandemic. God bless his kind soul. Read the book, take good notes and you'll be fine for his module.

This is a joint review for 101A, for which I had White, Chandler, and Piri.

The class is structured such to have 3 exams worth 25% each (non-cumulative) & quizzes/discussion attendance worth the remaining 25%. Simple stuff really.

Now, as for whether I liked the class....I don't know. Seriously. Some days, learning about neurological electrophysiology and how the senses work would be extremely fascinating, and other days, mostly learning about reflexes, would make the 2-hour class feel like it was going on for half a day. To be said, I was a neuroscience major coming in and then bumped that down to a neuroscience minor coming out - make of that what you will.

The thing is, the entire neuroscience 101 series is exceptionally pedantic. On exams, one needs to use the proper verbiage each time, be thorough, answer the question and supply a bit more to make sure that you've got it right, and then you might...might get full credit on an essay question.

Piri's module would be considered by most the "easier" of the three, however, I had the hardest time during his exam. Though they were 40 multiple choice it was slightly tricky wording and I don't think his lectures did a good job at covering the material that would be covered on the exam. I would highly recommend reading the textbook and taking notes from there rather than relying fully on lecture. There were details on the exam that were barely mentioned in lecture so when it came up it was confusing. It is incredibly evident that Piri is very intelligent, however, he was not the best lecturer when conveying some of his points. Though his material was fairly interesting and pretty straight forward I would say this was my least favorite module because of the way the lectures went. The mean was a 77 and the median was a 82.5 so it was slightly lower than both of the previous modules.

He has very dense/detailed lectures about the sensory systems that can be a drag to get through sometimes even though I did find it very interesting. On the bright side, if you take really good notes and just skim along in the textbook, his 40 MC test is quite straightforward. I wouldn't say easy bc the mean was a 78 and media was 82.5, but reading the questions AND answer choices carefully (some times he can be tricky) is a must to succeed.

Otherwise he's extremely nice and helpful and has a much better testing experience than Chandler and White.

Piri is a sweet, little angel. He's basically god's apology for the rest of this class. Even as we were taking our test he wanted to give us extra time and made jokes, and I love him.
His module has the most material but is very easy to understand. It's basically a stream of arbitrary facts and he follows the book extremely closely. He's hard to understand and throws in lots of technical words that none of us know. However, the man is so understanding and helpful via email and office hours.
He made his module exam 40 MC in about 70 minutes for us when he heard we didn't feel up to free-response. He held a review where he went slide-by-slide and answered everyone's questions. I ended up getting a 100/100 on his exam purely by taking really good book notes. For comparison, I got an A on Chandler's, and a B with the 10 point adjustment on White's.
Overall I think the modules went like this for me
Interesting material: Chandler> Piri> White
Easiest material: Piri> White> Chandler
Nicest prof: Piri> Chandler=White
Tests: Piri> Chandler> White
Prepares you for the test: Chandler> Piri> White
Overall module: Piri>Chandler> White

Slides are absolutely horrible. And these are combined with the lectures that are incredibly difficult to understand for many reasons.

HAHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAH.
Sorry, I just needed to get that out. Out of all the jokes I have heard in my twenty years on this earth, this class was by far the biggest one. Actually, maybe if Natik learned a couple jokes this class might actually be bearable. I cannot tell you how to pass this class, but I can tell you how not to fall asleep in one: sock yourself in the head so the pounding headache keeps you awake. That is, if Natik hasn’t given you one already. To really excel in this class though, pay attention to the things he quickly glosses over, and do not even attempt to listen to the things he drones on and on about. Seriously, that is how he teaches.

Personally, most of what I learned in this module was what I taught myself from the book. The Purves book--and any other neuro textbooks you have--are gonna be your saving graces. His lectures were really unorganized, constantly jumping around, slides out of order, and a lot of what he mentioned seemed to have no relation to anything else. It was also a near impossibility to take notes on his lectures, because his slides were all pictures and diagrams and he would just put it up and talk through it. Which may have been more helpful if the diagrams weren't unnecessarily complicated/advanced. It would also be difficult to understand him sometimes, as he would kind of go off on a side note, end up somewhere else, go back three slides, somehow tie that in to the first slide, and suddenly the lecture is over and we didn't get through the whole powerpoint. I think most people just started watching them recorded, but personally I felt that this made them even more difficult to understand. Nothing against Piri, he seems like a nice guy and you can tell he really cares about the students, it's just that this module could probably be more organized. He also held a review session for us before the exam that went for like 4 or 5 hours, so no one can ever say he isn't dedicated. Probably my least favorite of the three modules, but I'm pretty sure there are people in the class who would be willing to fight me over whether Chandler's was the hardest. Not that bad, just again, probably not a course to take unless you're a major taking the course series. I think there are better elective options if you're a nonmajor.

You have to take this as a neuro major, so no point in dwelling over if its a good class or not... I personally have mixed feelings because I thought they could make a neuro class much more interesting by focusing on diseases instead of spending so much time on electrophysiology and graphs... if you want to be a neuro researcher you will love it, if you want to be a clinical doctor you might not love it as much. If you're not a neuro major do not take it, its not worth it.
All modules are non cumulative, so think of it as 3 short classes you take with a test at the end of each one and weekly quizzes.
Chandler's module: electrophysiology on steroids. I hated the content but respected the professor. Use his course reader and take notes directly on it during his lectures. Make sure you add any text from the slides to the course reader. It took me about 3h to get through each 1h50 lecture so that I could pause it and make notes or go back on the recording when I didn't catch something. His tests are short answer and open book, 1h long and about 10 questions. Really make sure you do the study questions each week with your study group, as they help prepare you for the test. You really don't need to read the book if you have all the info from the reader, lectures and the study questions. His study questions sometimes took a whole afternoon to do. It's definitely the module you need to study for the most unless you are a physics and electrophysiology lover. Go to all the OH as he explains the study questions there and its actually helpful. His quizzes are the hardest but you can score above a 7/10 if you're well prepared, I managed to get full marks on one of them. For the midterm I got 89.
White's module: she is a bit all over the place in lectures sometimes. The content is more bio and science and less physics which I appreciated. For her module the study questions are also helpful and less hard than chandler's. The quizzes require you to read a research paper, but the paper won't be useful for the midterm. The midterm is also short answer and open book. The textbook is actually helpful for her module, as I found her lectures confusing sometimes, and a lot of the figures she uses are from the book, so you can just study from there and its easier to understand. Still make sure to watch all lectures though because some stuff is not on the book and some parts of the book are not needed. I can't remember if her OH were that helpful. I got full marks or close to it on her quizzes, and about an 85 on the midterm. The midterm was really long for the time that you have, so since its open book I recommend writing out all the study questions really well and even writing extra stuff for the main topics that are likely to be on the midterm. That way you can copy paste some sentences form your notes and save time. I was sick the week of my test so didn't finish studying as much as I could have, but if you prepare well you can probably do better than I did.
Piri: for me it was the easiest module. The lectures are awful, I fell asleep on every single one of them, didn't matter the time of day. I feel bad saying that because he is a sweet man, but he just speaks so monotone... The slides are extremely bare on text, and its super hard to understand his accent sometimes. My recommendation would be to read the book. 90% of his pictures are from the book and follow the chapter order. Honestly, I would just read each chapter and then watch the lecture to make sure he didn't mention any extra info that wasn't on the book. The last couple vision lectures have a lot of content that's not on the book, but these are the only two that you can actually follow along well. His quizzes were very straightforward. The midterm was MC and I got a 95% even though this is the module I studied for the least (finals week got way too crowded with other classes). Being open note definitely helped, as the questions are super straightforward. So if you make notes from the textbook + any new concept mentioned in lectures and have this plus the textbook open, you can find all your answers to the test even without memorising the details. Study questions were a nice review, but he didnt go over them in OH, so unless you have a specific question you want to clarify its not worth attending them.
Overall the class has a positive which is that each module works almost as its own class.s So its easy to keep up with material for 2-3 weeks, take a test, and then start fresh with a new module. You will definitely appreciate this finals week! Study questions are helpful as a practice (but dont count for a grade). Quizzes will help keep you on top of studying and for the most part you can get a B or A average on them. Make a lot of good notes and know where the info is, so that open note exams become easier. There's some extra credit stuff that's impossible not to get full marks on, so this will be a nice grade boost. It's possible to get an A even if you don't do super well on a module (either you hated it, were sick, let it pile up, whatever), so don't stress if it doesn't start off well as you'll get a chance to improve! I personally felt that each module was easier than the previous one, so keep at it and if you're organised and work at it you can get an A

Ok, this class was a rollercoaster ride. Hardest material (Chandler), medium material (White), easy but a lot of material to understand (Piri). Chandler's midterm was conceptual and having only about 1hr for 10 free-response questions was pretty stressful to do. However, the grading was lenient for this exam. Avg was about 80% and that's what I got. now the second module which was fun to learn was White, the midterm was so much better and easier than chandlers.... or so we thought! We were told to keep it simple and answer the question straight forward. This is what the class did, but when we got our scores back it was a complete disaster. The rubric was totally against what we are asked to provide on the exam and that totally screwed us over. Avg was about 68% and we got 10 pts back to bring it to 78%avg. Got a 75% after that. At this point, I knew I wasn't gonna get an A so I switched to P/NP. Piri is a great guy, but it's hard to listen to his lectures, his voice is very monotone, but he did give us a 40 MC choice exam which was the easiest out of the three modules. Advice: watch the lectures, read the book, and go to office hours! Good luck FALL 2021 !