After reading the many 1 star reviews, I was a bit ambivalent about this unit. However, the new coordinator, Kristin Barry, was fantastic. She is passionate about the subject and attentive to all students' questions and concerns. The lectures were engaging and organised in a coherent manner so that later topics built on earlier topics. The labs were fun as you had the freedom to walk around and look at the specimens in your own time, and the lab demonstrators were extremely helpful and approachable. I liked the structure of assessments, my favourite being the brain structure poster (which I thought was a good complement to the comparatively more content heavy midsem/final exams). There is a lot of content in this unit, but I think the exam questions were fair and answerable if you put in the work. Definitely my favourite unit this semester.

Favourite unit this semester. I never met the old coordinator, but Kristin was very approachable and genuinely helpful. The content was really interesting, so it wasn't hard to stay up to date with lectures. And as long as you watch the lectures, the workload is very manageable. The labs were surprisingly fun, and the demonstrators were obviously passionate about the content. I don't like assignments, so I'm glad there was only one. Though the brain poster had enough creative freedom to be fun.

Awesome unit! Not gonna lie coming into this unit I have heard trauma stories about this unit, but Kristin took over this unit this semester. Kristin is absolutely the sweetest! Patient, explains concepts in simple, digestible ways, and the resources provided on LMS are really helpful in helping you consolidate information. Kristin is also pretty understanding to her students Weekly labs where we got to look at cadavers and brain scans were fun as well. Assessment components include a practical midsem exam, a scientific poster, and 2 final exams (1 theory, 1 practical). Having a midsem really makes you study for the unit earlier in semester instead of waiting to cram in study break week in week 13. The content is on the heavier on, for sure, but nothing that cannot be fixed by some hard work. Would recommend doing it if you're studying Anatomy (as an elective), and is an awesome core unit for Neuroscience. If you're used to heavy content in Physiology, this should be alright

I honestly think Kristin is the most helpful lecturer I've encountered at UWA.( I finished my undergraduate last year (not going to mention which major, but it was also in the biomedical science discipline), and the lecturers I had were nothing compared to how helpful Kristin is. She is super helpful and friendly in the labs, always willing to demonstrate to ensure we were on track. She always answered questions on the discussion board promptly, marked our assessments within a week, and posted our marks. She's very thoughtful from a student perspective when designing her exam questions; they were all reasonable. It was also sweet to hear that she mentioned she was a student not long ago, so she really puts thought into designing questions for us. She also always does a little revision on the previous lecture before we start every lecture, which is really nice too. I really hope I will have the honor to have her as a unit coordinator in my future studies of neuroscience or even have her as a lecturer at any point in my future! Thank you, Kristin. It's truly my pleasure to be your student. I'm too shy to express how much I appreciate your teaching, so I thought I could say it here in StudentVIP!

The hardest unit I have done at UWA. Felt like literal hell.

I have never been so excited to finish a unit in my entire academic career spanning 3 degrees over 2 universities (Curtin for a double and UWA for 1), listen to a majority of the reviews here people don’t lash out this bad for no reason, those scoring it higher either feel bad for the tutor or have the privilege of spending every moment of their time studying this instead of working & doing 4 units like majority of us do. The lectures are filled with mistakes so even if you study you’ll still end up confused and the tests often ask you questions on off topic things that were mentioned very briefly, sometimes not at all, making it almost impossible to score high unless you watch the lectures religiously over and over to catch every little comment made (which, if you’re in neuro, is impossible if you have 3 other content heavy units). The teacher doesn’t like honest feedback either so best of luck, this unit will likely never change.

Very time consuming and difficult. I liked the content but felt like it was a bit much and the unit structure (assessments and labs) wasn't set up in a way I personally found enjoyable or useful. I also felt like any constructive criticism was pointless to express and met with defensiveness which was probably the most disapointing part of the entire experience. I'd probably avoid this unit if you're aiming for HD's.

Please listen to the reviews below me and do yourselfs a favour and DONT do thus unit unless its your core, then I'll pray for you. Also Amanda needs to be sacked or at least held accountable, so many students failing is perhaps not because they're "dumb" or "don't try enough" its because her assessments are so hard, her lectures boring and the unit just being poorly structured in general. To say thus unit is crap is an understatement.

The coordination of this unit needs to be looked at. A failing average (i.e., 25%) for 2/4 VAEs is not the result of student commitment, but rather the coordination of the unit. If this were any other subject, the validity of the assessment, and quite frankly the coordination, would be called into question. To instead blame these results on students' "ineffective study strategies" is an issue in itself. Any feedback that is provided is met with deflection and hostility, and there is no accountability. Substantial feedback was provided after VAE 3, but for some reason, the UC decides to make VAE 4 even harder, resulting in a failing average. To say that the only thing that has changed over the years is the cohort (again, blaming the students) shows that feedback is not taken onboard, and thus the unit content/coordination has not changed. Lectures are pulled straight from the textbook, and even though the textbook is as dry as a biscuit, you still learn more from reading it and watching youtube videos. I am getting 7s in every other unit but for some reason, I seem to be on a 5 average for this one; I wonder why. Very disappointed.

Worst unit! It’s so weird that the unit coordinator is unable to take any constructive criticism, disregarding the students’ concerns and stating that the only thing that has changed is the cohort of students. In the labs, many of the limited number lab demonstrators were just as clueless as the students. The unit coordinator needs to ensure that topics covered in the lectures and assessed in the VAEs are well understood by the lab demonstrators so that when students ask for help, they are assisted by people who know what they are talking about. The coordinator should stop blaming the students and actually listen to what would assist us in succeeding. Neuro might be challenging, but anything is possible with the right mentors. Also if the VAEs were more achievable, then a lot of us wouldn’t have lost hope/given up on this unit so early on.