Anxiety and self-efficacy related to learning neuroanatomy in an integrated medical curriculum.

Medical student anxiety towards learning neuroanatomy — neurophobia, a key obstacle in medical education, is influencing medical student success and potentially swaying medical students away from neurology careers. This is particularly concerning with condensed neuroanatomy instructional hours from curriculum integration and the concurrent shortage of neurologists, combined with the rising prevalence of neurological disease, and medical students choosing neurological specialties at lower rates. Neuroanatomy education is one factor described in the literature as contributing toneurophobia, yet specific ways in which neuroanatomy education could be improved have not yet been explained. In this present work, we demonstrate four specific domains, namely content, instruction, communication, and organization, through which neuroanatomy education may be improved. We propose neuroanxiety may more accurately describe this phenomenon and developed a novel neuroanxiety scale. Our survey data show upper-class and female medical students exhibit greater neuroanxiety. Additionally, we demonstrate premedical neuroanatomy and/or neuroscience experience predicts a decrease in neuroanxiety. Another construct was explored as a way of potentially improving student task-specific confidence in neuroanatomy, namely — neuroanatomy self-efficacy. A novel neuroanatomy self-efficacy scale was developed and the effect of premedical neuroanatomy and/or neuroscience experiences on neuroanatomy self-efficacy was explored. Consistent with the literature on anatomy self-efficacy, our survey data revealed that premedical neuroanatomy experiences, especially with cadaveric dissection, improve neuroanatomy self-efficacy. Additionally, our data is trending towards female medical students showing a greater increase in neuroanatomy self-efficacy with premedical neuroscience and/or neuroanatomy exposure. Lastly, the exploration of developing a time-efficient learning intervention to be administered within an integrated curriculum led to the development of adaptive neuroanatomy eLearning intervention. Comparing the effects of the adaptive and non-adaptive eLearning interventions on medical student neuroanxiety and neuroanatomy self-efficacy demonstrated adaptive eLearning only significantly influenced neuroanatomy self- efficacy. This finding, together with our novel finding that premedical neuroanatomy and/or neuroscience experience also predicts lower neuroanxiety in medical school, suggests neuroanatomy self-efficacy may hold the key to mitigating the effects of neuroanxiety in neuroanatomy education

In praise of tedious anatomy

Functional neuroimaging is fundamentally a tool for mapping function to structure, and its success consequently requires neuroanatomical precision and accuracy. Here we review the various means by which functional activation can be localized to neuroanatomy and suggest that the gold standard should be localization to the individual’s or group’s own anatomy through the use of neuroanatomical knowledge and atlases of neuroanatomy. While automated means of localization may be useful, they cannot provide the necessary accuracy, given variability between individuals. We also suggest that the field of functional neuroimaging needs to converge on a common set of methods for reporting functional localization including a common “standard” space and criteria for what constitutes sufficient evidence to report activation in terms of Brodmann’s areas

An exercise on developing an ontology-epistemology about schizophrenia and neuroanatomy

This paper describes preliminary ideas on formalizing some concepts of neuroanatomy into ontological and epistemological terms. We envisage the application of this ontology on the assimilation of facts about medical knowledge about neuroimages from schizophrenic patients

Valentino Braitenberg: From neuroanatomy to behavior and back

This article compiles an expose of Valentino Braitenberg's singular view on neuroanatomy and neuroscience. The review emphasizes his topologically informed work on neuroanatomy and his dialectics of brain-based explanations of motor behavior. Some of his early ideas on topologically informed neuroanatomy are presented, together with some of his more obscure work on the taxonomy of neural fiber bundles and synaptic arborizations. His functionally informed interpretations of neuroanatomy of the cerebellum, cortex, and hippocampus, are introduced. Finally, we will touch on his philosophical views and the inextricable role of function in the explanation of neural behavior

Neuroanatomy of the Blackspotted Rockskipper, Entomacrodus striatus

Here I characterized the central neuroanatomy of the Blackspotted Rockskipper, Entomacrodus striatus, native to French Polynesia. The neuroanatomy of E. striatus has not been studied prior to this paper. I used several histology and antibody staining techniques to accomplish this, including Crystal Violet, immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, and Bielschowsky’s Silver Nitrate staining. This paper describes the most successful techniques used, identifies major structures in the species’ neuroanatomy, and also explains why studying E. striatus is important in the future of vertebrate research

Can medical students accurately predict their learning? A study comparing perceived and actual performance in neuroanatomy

It is important that clinicians are able to adequately assess their level of knowledge and competence in order to be safe practitioners of medicine. The medical literature contains numerous examples of poor self-assessment accuracy amongst medical students over a range of subjects however this ability in neuroanatomy has yet to be observed. Second year medical students attending neuroanatomy revision sessions at the University of Southampton and the competitors of the National Undergraduate Neuroanatomy Competition were asked to rate their level of knowledge in neuroanatomy. The responses from the former group were compared to performance on a ten item multiple choice question examination and the latter group were compared to their performance within the competition. In both cohorts, self-assessments of perceived level of knowledge correlated weakly to their performance in their respective objective knowledge assessments (r = 0.30 and r = 0.44). Within the NUNC, this correlation improved when students were instead asked to rate their performance on a specific examination within the competition (spotter, rS = 0.68; MCQ, rS = 0.58). Despite its inherent difficulty, medical student self-assessment accuracy in neuroanatomy is comparable to other subjects within the medical curriculum. Anat Sci Educ. (c) 2016 American Association of Anatomists

Tools and resources for neuroanatomy education: a systematic review

The aim of this review was to identify studies exploring neuroanatomy teaching tools and their impact in learning, as a basis towards the implementation of a neuroanatomy program in the context of a curricular reform in medical education

Functional neuroanatomy of time-to-passage perception

The time until an approaching object passes the observer is referred to as time-to-passage (TTP). Accurate judgment of TTP is critical for visually guided navigation, such as when walking, riding a bicycle, or driving a car. Previous research has shown that observers are able to make TTP judgments in the absence of information about local retinal object expansion. In this paper we combine psychophysics and functional MRI (fMRI) to investigate the neural substrate of TTP processing. In a previous psychophysical study, we demonstrated that when local retinal expansion cues are not available, observers take advantage of multiple sources of information to judge TTP, such as optic flow and object retinal velocities, and integrate these cues through a flexible and economic strategy. To induce strategy changes, we introduced trials with motion but without coherent optic flow (0% coherence of the background), and trials with coherent, but noisy, optic flow (75% coherence of the background). In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we found that coherent optic flow cues resulted in better behavioral performance as well as higher and broader cortical activations across the visual motion processing pathway. Blood oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal changes showed significant involvement of optic flow processing in the precentral sulcus (PreCS), postcentral sulcus (PostCS) and middle temporal gyrus (MTG) across all conditions. Not only highly activated during motion processing, bilateral hMT areas also showed a complex pattern in TTP judgment processing, which reflected a flexible TTP response strategy.Accepted manuscrip