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.

In fall 2024, Neuroscience M101A was split into three modules: Dr. Felix Schweizer (Module 1 Electrophysiology), Dr. Stephanie White (Module 2 Motor Systems), Dr. Natik Piri (Module 3 Sensory Systems). This review will talk about the class in general and each professor.
Overall, this class did not feel too bad, especially considering the reputation it has amongst neuroscience students. In fall 2024, all the exams were open book and open note, which likely contributed to the class feeling much easier than years past. The exams were all on Canvas with live proctoring over Zoom. Each professor wrote the exam for their module, and the exams were not cumulative, but rather essentially 3 distinct tests for the three modules.
Class Logistics: The class was out of 100 points. Each module had an exam which was worth 20 points, so a total of 60 points across the three exams. There were 9 quizzes (3 points each) in the weekly discussion section, of which the 7 best scores were kept, so 21 points there. There was 4 points awarded for participation and attendance in discussion sections. The final 15 points was for short one-page summary writeups from two clinical correlation lectures with UCLA MDs and one neuroscience seminar that we had to attend independently anytime during the quarter. There was no extra credit offered in this class, and no curves on any of the exams or the course overall.
Module 1 Electrophysiology by Felix Schweizer:
Dr. Schweizer's module was all about electrophysiology, membrane potentials, and ion channels. He is an incredibly sweet and caring professor, taking time during lecture and office hours to provide extensive answers to any and all student questions. Dr. Schweizer does tend to ramble and stray on tangents for a while, so sometimes his lectures are quite confusing. Additionally, there is not much text on his slides, but rather only pictures/graphs, so understanding and writing down what he is saying is crucial. His exam wasn't terrible; it did have the lowest average of the three, though. It was mainly short-answer questions with a few select all that apply multiple choice questions as well. For Schweizer's exam, having a strong conceptual understanding of the material is crucial; most of his questions were not something that was found word-for-word on the slides, but rather relied on a true understanding of his material. Average on his exam was an 82% (16.37/20).
Module 2 Motor Systems by Stephanie White:
Dr. White's module was all about motor systems and motor control, from lower motor neurons and upper motor neurons to the basal ganglia and cerebellum. Dr. White was an incredibly clear lecturer, and her slides were the most helpful and informative of the three professors. There were a lot of basal ganglia and cerebellum pathways to know, but since our year was open note, this was much easier since memorization was not required. Dr. White was very helpful in office hours as well. Her exam felt alright and was mostly multiple choice, but there were a lot of ambiguous questions, and many of the questions were not directly covered in lecture but rather required critical thinking and interpretation. Average on her exam was an 85% (17/20).
Module 3 Sensory Systems by Natik Piri:
Dr. Piri's module was all about sensory systems, like hearing, taste, touch, smell, pain, but mostly on vision since his research focuses on ophthalmology. Dr. Piri was an incredibly clear and helpful professor; his slides were mainly all images, but he was so clear while explaining that if you take quality notes, you will succeed on his exam. Watching the lecture recordings for Dr. Piri's lectures is also very beneficial to catch all the details. I would say that Dr. Piri's module is the most dense; there are a lot of sensory transduction pathways to understand, especially for vision. Granted since our exams were open note, it was significantly easier, as we only had to understand how the pathway worked and not actually memorize the entire pathway itself. Dr. Piri's exam felt the easiest and most straightforward of the three professors; most of the answers could be found directly in the lecture slides, and not much conceptual/critical thinking was needed to succeed in his exam. Average on his exam was a 91% (18.16/20).
Overall, while many say and hear horrors about this class, I thought it wasn't that bad at all, probably because of the online, open-note exams. I think this class was definitely much easier than Neuroscience 102. Grading wise, the averages for each exam are listed above, and most people had a 40/40 (or very close to full marks) on the non-exam points of this class, i.e. the quizzes, participation, and seminar/clinical correlation writeups. Therefore, the average score on this class if we do (16.37 + 17 + 18.16 + 40) = 91.5, which is an A-. A- average for NEUROSC M101A, an upper-division core neuroscience class does not seem bad at all. Moreover, the medians for each exam was approximately 0.5% above the average/mean, so if we consider the median grade of the class, it is likely right around 93%, which is the cutoff for an A. How nice! However, last year (fall 2023)'s distributions were much lower, likely because 2023's exams were in person without any notes, so the online open-note exams definitely did make the 2024 class much easier.
Schweizer's module was the most conceptually rigorous, while Piri's module was the most dense with information and pathways to memorize/understand. White's module was a healthy balance of conceptual understanding and pathway memorization. Overall, this class was a uniquely enjoyable experience of essentially 3 three-week long mini-classes, each taught on a different topic by a professor who does research and is an expert in their field of lecture.

Content-wise, I thought this was a very interesting class. When I took it tests were open note and taken online (they watched us over Zoom however). There were also weekly quizzes that we would either take before the discussion or during discussion depending on the professor.

This class has three modules:
Module 1: cellular physiology by Dr .Schweizer
- Schweizer is not the greatest of lecturers and there's never any writing on his slides
- read the assigned textbook pages if you want to understand the content
- the test is very straightforward if you read the textbook and are able to conceptually understand the equations he gives you, don't worry about doing any math with said equations
- considered the "worst" module in this class so if you feel its hard, the rest of the class probably would agree with you
Module 2: motor systems by Dr. White
- White is a terrific lecturer with lots of words and she does reviews of her past lectures
- i read the textbook for this but I don't think it was necessary
- this test was hard for me, things were very oddly worded and a big chunk of your grade was from true or false questions (that were also vague) so i did the worst on this exam
Module 3: sensory systems by Dr. Piri
- imo Piri is the best professor
- why? good at lecturing (provided you pay attention to what he is saying) (writing on his slides but not too much) and his tests/quizzes are very straightfoward
- don't read textbook for this, he tells you multiple times that it will confuse you

Quizzes were relatively easy and also open note. The rest of your grade is attendance (for discussion only) and seminar write ups.

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.