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While preparing for a microteaching class on neuroscience I stumbled upon notes on a poster I attended at #SfN18 about “Neurohistory Cartoons”. To be honest this (History of Neuroscience) is one of the topics I found harder to digest when I took my first neuroscience class and I’m confident that others felt the same. As an instructor and as a learner I have seen the effectiveness of using cartoons as a tool for teaching/learning. The effectiveness of cartoons in teaching can also be found in the literature and it is used in many fields including economics, social and physical sciences [1,2]. Ok, I’ll get to the point. Neurohistory Cartoons are an online tool developed by the Neuroscience Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. While at the poster I learned from Samantha Baglot, the lead project organizer, that this project aims to share the history of neuroscience through cartoon imagery and the content is freely accessible. One of their goals for the future is to share information about scientists whose discoveries may not be as well-known and have paved the way for current research questions.  Neurohistory Cartoons are shared in the form of a timeline (shown above and at the Neurohistory Cartoons website) and once you click on the image it gives you the information from the scientist highlighted in the picture (below).  There are currently ten scientists listed and the list will continue to grow as the team has recently been awarded funds for the expansion of this project. I think this is a great resource for teaching about “Neurohistory” and think it should be widely shared. All of the content can be downloaded through their website. Finally, the creators are open to ideas and collaborations. If interested feel free to contact them through this form or Twitter @neurohistoons. References *This year I was selected as an Official 2018 Society for Neuroscience Blogger and this was one of my blog posts about my assigned theme which was Theme J:Neuroscience History and Education.
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Did you know that approximately 1.3 billion people live with some form of vision impairment?[1] Well if you didn’t I don’t feel as bad because this was one of the first things I learned when I visited Giovanne Diniz and Dr. Luciane Sita’s poster on “Development of low-cost tactile neuroanatomy learning tools for blind and visually impaired students”. I always try to stay updated on new tools used for inclusive instruction. That is how I learned about Giovanne and Dr. Sita’s work while attending Theme J posters at the annual meeting.  Giovanne Diniz and Dr. Luciane Sita at their poster during SfN’s Annual meeting. Giovanne and Dr. Sita are scientists at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. This past year when they started teaching the neuroanatomy course they realized that there was a blind student in their class and the instructional materials were limited to teach this population. Then they began to identify tools to use on their instruction to improve teaching for blind and visually impaired students. Most anatomy courses use illustrations, medical imaging, and cadavers; although there are didactic tools available these are for sighted individuals and most of them are in English. Thus, this team decided to develop a tool to improve the teaching of neuroanatomy concepts using low-cost materials, one that could be accessible and implemented without difficulty. Among the tools they developed for teaching neuroanatomy was a fixed brain specimen which had the gyri covered with different textured fabrics and marked with pins of various sizes. This approach was also used to teach internal structures of the brain which were presented as digitally drawn brain slides. Implementation of their tools increased the engagement of the blind student attending their class. The students’ performance was similar to the sighted peers and this motivated them to increase the repertoire of structures they have developed and to provide this as a blueprint for use of by others with blind or visually impaired students. Using tactile strategies for teaching can be difficult as there are several things to consider including the students’ needs and abilities, and the tasks that will be implemented [2]. The tools developed by Giovanne and Dr. Sita, used to teach neuroanatomy core concepts, are a great strategy for inclusiveness and effective instruction for blind and visually impaired learners.  Example of a digitally drawn brain section and the textures used for teaching about specific structures. References *This year I was selected as an Official 2018 Society for Neuroscience Blogger and this was one of my blog posts about my assigned theme which was Theme J:Neuroscience History and Education.
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