Brain Bugs: Understanding Brain through Its Flaws
Lecture, three hours. Requisite: course 115 or M117C. Designed for juniors/seniors. Psychology of brain flaws and limitations to understand how brain works by studying what it does well and understanding neuroscience of why brain is poorly suited to perform some tasks such as numerical calculations, memorizing lists and names, and making unbiased decisions. Topics include memory (types of memory, false memories, misinformation and memory, memory capacity) and cognitive biases (framing, anchoring, and temporal discounting). Exploration of underlying neural causes of brain flaws and limitations in context of brain's associative architecture. Basic neurophysiology, synaptic plasticity, cortical plasticity, neural basis of learning and memory, and some computational neuroscience. P/NP or letter grading.
Review Summary
- Clarity
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6.7 / 10
- Organization
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8.3 / 10
- Time
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0-5 hrs/week
- Overall
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3.3 / 10
Reviews
Professor Buonomano is super nice and chill. The class itself is extremely easy; there's no assignments at all except for a group presentation during the last 3 weeks. The majority of the class is weighted on the midterm and final, which the professor grades pretty easily. Attendance is not required but I would recommend it because the test material comes entirely from the lectures, and the uploaded slides don't make much sense without attending lecture.
This class sounds a lot cooler than it actually is. It's pretty boring but not too difficult. If you study the slides before the tests you should be fine.
Displaying all 2 reviews
Course
Grading Information
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Has a group project
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Attendance not required
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1 midterm
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10th week final
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0% recommend the textbook