Curriculum Map

Neuroscience

Author:
Jeffrey Kingsbury, Senior Lecturer, College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona

This Curriculum Map provides a list of highly relevant and engaging content from throughout AccessScience for use in enriching your teaching. Site assets such as tables, graphs, diagrams, photos, and animations have been mapped to standard topics taught in a Neuroscience course. Use the "Copy Link" functionality to paste a direct link from each asset into your school's learning management system for easy incorporation into your curriculum.

Course Topics


Introduction to Neuroscience and Nerve Cell Function
Asset Description
Animation This animation elegantly demonstrates the chemical basis for the resting membrane potential and subsequent action potential that are essential components of the electrochemical basis for nerve cell impulses.

Suggested use: Play this animation to demonstrate the role of voltage-gated ions in nerve impulse generation and propagation.		 copy link
Diagram This diagram is a midsagittal view of the human brain, with major landmarks labeled for ease of reference.

Suggested use: Review the major structures of the human brain.		 copy link
Diagram This diagram of a nerve cell body and axon demonstrates the components of a functional nerve cell that allow for information transmission in both anterograde and retrograde fashion.

Suggested use: Support a discussion of axoplasmic transport in a nerve cell.		 copy link
Diagram This diagram from the article on synaptic transmission demonstrates the necessary concepts for understanding synaptic signaling between nerve cells. It also illustrates the crucial concept that while information moves among individual nerve cells as the electrochemical phenomenon of the action potential, the transmission of information between nerve cells occurs by synaptic transmission.

Suggested use: Have students use this diagram to compare and contrast structures and mechanisms in electrical and chemical synapses.		 copy link
Diagram This illustration shows the essential components of a nerve cell, including the nerve cell body, dendrites, and axons. Also shown is the myelin sheath, which allows for greater speed and fidelity of transmission.

Suggested use: Show without labels and have students identify the cell body, nucleus, axon, and dendrites.		 copy link
Neurodevelopment
Asset Description
Diagram This illustration shows the embryonic development of the neural crest tissue and early embryology of the nervous system.

Suggested use: Support a discussion of embryonic development of neural crest cells.		 copy link
Biography Sir Gavin De Beer was an eminent embryologist of the 20th century who elucidated much of what we currently understand about neurodevelopment in the embryo.

Suggested use: Have students use this biography as a jumping-off point for a research paper on De Beer's contributions to the science of embryology.		 copy link
News This news story explores the neurobiology of the human brain in the first few months of life, and examines alterations and adaptations of the nervous system that produce the experiential process of learning.

Suggested use: Assign before class and use as a basis to discuss how brains develop, and how the environment impacts brain development in children.		 copy link
Table Attachment represents an important developmental and relational milestone in the development of cognitive and emotional development. This table outlines Bowlby's theory of the four phases of the development of attachment.

Suggested use: Have students work in small groups to create a presentation that represents Bowlby's theory. This could be a song, rap, video, poem, short play, and so on. Encourage students to be creative.		 copy link
Somatosensory System
Asset Description
Animation This animation demonstrates a sensory nerve and receptor. It summarizes the way the nervous system gathers information from the surroundings via various receptor types, and transmits the information to the central nervous system for processing.

Suggested use: Play this animation in class, pausing at various points to identify the presynaptic and post-synaptic structures, and to differentiate between communication between nerve cells, and electrical signals exchanged within nerve cells.		 copy link
Video This video summarizes how sensation occurs, including how external stimuli are converted to nerve signals and then processed by various components of the nervous system.

Suggested use: Have students preview this video and then commence a group discussion of how we convert the energy of a stimulus to a nerve signal in the body.		 copy link
Diagram This illustration from the article on pain shows how a vital component of sensory information—pain—is gathered and processed by the nervous system.

Suggested use: Have students use this diagram to trace the neurophysiology of incoming pain sensation.		 copy link
Video This video explains the chemistry of how Tylenol™ and similar pharmacological agents relieve pain.

Suggested use: Play this video as a demonstration of the mechanism of analgesia.		 copy link
Video This video explores the chemical sense of taste—particularly why some foods taste sweet—and discusses how taste relates to nutrition.

Suggested use: Assign this video and then have students create a presentation on why some foods taste "good."		 copy link
Motor System
Asset Description
Diagram This illustration of the precentral motor cortex and supplementary motor area in a monkey's brain shows where the neural pathways that initiate voluntary motor movements begin.

Suggested use: Demonstrate how the nervous system controls motor activity.		 copy link
Diagram This illustration demonstrates, schematically, the necessary components and connections of how motor signals are transmitted from the vertebrate brain to target tissues.

Suggested use: Support a discussion of how information travels from the brain to the outer structures of the body.		 copy link
Video This video details the translation that occurs as a nerve signal arrives at the interface between the nervous system and the muscular system, the neuromuscular junction.

Suggested use: Have students watch video prior to a discussion about action potentials and muscle contraction.		 copy link
Diagram This figure diagrams the flow of information from areas of higher brain function to the spinal cord.

Suggested use: Use this diagram to explain why we see contralateral deficits as a consequence of neuronal injury.		 copy link
News This news story outlines a key area of research involved in Parkinson's disease, explaining how signals from gut microbes can activate immune cells called microglia in the mouse brain, causing inflammation that’s characteristic of this disease.

Suggested use: Have students read this article before class, and then come to class prepared to discuss both Parkinson's disease and the popular topic of how gut microbes have far-reaching and previously undiscovered implications for human health and disease.		 copy link
Autonomic Nervous System
Asset Description
Video This video briefly summarizes the role of the autonomic nervous system in regulating the physiological reaction of fear.

Suggested use: Show this video in class, then have students lead a class discussion about the evolutionary advantage of fear as a useful autonomic response, and how the involuntary physiological response is key to survival.		 copy link
Video This video discusses the impact of a particular and ubiquitous device—the smartphone—on an important aspect of neuronal function: sleep.

Suggested use: Assign this video, and have students design a study to assess how their own use of a smartphone in the evening impacts their sleep patterns.		 copy link
Diagram This diagram depicts a map of the sympathetic division of the human autonomic nervous system.

Suggested use: Point out how sensory visceral nerve fibers innervate blood vessels and viscera and carry sensory information to the spinal cord, thus providing a visceral reflex arc.		 copy link
Video This video explains the physiological manifestations of stress, and describes how the human stress response is not well adapted to our modern way of life.

Suggested use: After watching this video, have students compare and contrast how the physiological response to physical danger is a useful adaptation, whereas those same physiological responses to psychological stress may be harmful.		 copy link
The Brain and Spinal Cord
Asset Description
Diagram This illustration shows a map of the lateral surface of the human cerebral cortex, providing an important "big picture" orientation of the regions of higher brain function.

Suggested use: Point out the four lobes that make up the shell of each brain hemisphere.		 copy link
Diagram This illustration shows a map of the medial surface of the human cerebral cortex, providing a more detailed map of the regions of higher brain function and the various connections between them.

Suggested use: Show this diagram without the labels, and have students identify the major parts of the brain.		 copy link
Diagram This illustration shows the essential cross sectional anatomy of the spinal cord.

Suggested use: Explain that understanding the anatomical relationships of various functional groups of nerve fibers is integral in understanding cord function, as well as diagnosis and therapy for cord injury.		 copy link
Diagram This illustration demonstrates the relationship of the spinal cord to the brainstem, brain, and spinal nerves.

Suggested use: Have students use this diagram to create an algorithm that outlines the hierarchy of control and communication in the nervous system.		 copy link
News This news story explores the relationship between football and brain injury, and suggests important potential consequences to learning, emotions, and behavior.

Suggested use: Support a discussion of traumatic brain injury, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and sports injuries.		 copy link
Peripheral Cranial Nerves
Asset Description
Diagram This illustration lays out the anatomical relationship of spinal nerves to the spinal cord.

Suggested use: Have students use clay or chenille stems to create a model of the relationship of the spinal cord to spinal nerves based on this diagram.		 copy link
Diagram This illustration demonstrates the evolutionary homology, and preservation of functional organization, between the spinal cord and peripheral nervous system in ancestral and living vertebrates.

Suggested use: Have students describe the evolutionary homology shown in this diagram, and discuss why this is important in understanding human nervous system function.		 copy link
Table This table lists the 12 pairs of cranial nerves in mammals.

Suggested use: Have students locate an image depicting the peripheral origins of these cranial nerves, and use the image in a short report on peripheral cranial nerves in mammals.		 copy link
Diagram This figure from the article on pain illustrates the organization of information by fiber columns in the spinal cord.

Suggested use: On the basis of this diagram, have students work in small groups to map out the kinds of neurological deficits one might expect from injuries to various parts of the spinal cord.		 copy link
Diseases of the Nervous System and Nerve Healing
Asset Description
Video This video discusses a growing topic of discussion in sports medicine today—protecting athletes from traumatic brain injury, specifically the types of injury associated with American football.

Suggested use: Have students watch the video and then develop a written set of guidelines about how to prevent and detect brain injuries in athletic settings.		 copy link
Photograph This image shows the consequences of an occlusive stroke, which blocks blood flow to the brain. The blockage occurs as a consequence of atherosclerotic disease.

Suggested use: Use this image to point out that, when blood flow is blocked, ischemia then leads to infarction and necrosis of neuronal tissue.		 copy link
Animation This video discusses a particular class of neuronal diseases called prion diseases. These include entities such as Creutzfeld-Jakob disease and mad cow disease.

Suggested use: Have students watch the video and then research the spongiform changes that take place as a result of prion diseases.		 copy link
Biography This biography summarizes the life and work of Dr. Alois Alzheimer, one of the eminent neuropathologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, who elucidated much of what we currently understand about the neurodegenerative process we now know as Alzheimer's disease.

Suggested use: Assign as prior reading before discussing Alzheimer's disease.		 copy link