This course explores the diverse ways that people teach and learn—in different countries, in different disciplines, and in different subcultures. We will discuss how theories of learning can be applied to a variety of hands-on, in-class learning activities. We compare schooling to other forms of knowledge transmission from initiation and apprenticeship to recent innovations in online education such as MOOCs. Students will employ a range of qualitative methods in conducting original research on topics of their choice.

In this CC BY licensed PowerPoint presentation, Dr. Declan King, who is a post-doc in the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the Edinburgh Medical School: Biomedical Sciences’ at the University of Edinburgh gives a brief explanation of the ageing brain and briefly describes a useful method for isolating both protein and RNA preparations from enriched synaptic fractions from post-mortem brain tissue.

The PowerPoint style lecture was made into an OER by Dr. King on April 2020 as part of the Digital Education module for the Postgraduate Certificate (PgCert) in Academic Practice at The University of Edinburgh.

Vision is the sensory modality that transforms light into a psychological experience of the world around you, with minimal bodily effort. This module provides an overview of the most significant steps in this transformation and strategies that your brain uses to achieve this visual understanding of the environment.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The 'Western' diet is often associated with highly processed foods rich in fat and low in fiber, which can be bad for our metabolism. But unhealthy food choices can also affect our brain, resulting in neuroinflammation and cognitive impairment. In a new study using a mouse model of obesity, researchers evaluated the effect of fiber on cognition and brain function via the gut-brain axis. β-glucan, the major soluble fiber in oat and barley grains, was fed to the mice for 15 weeks. The addition of this fiber prevented diet-induced cognitive impairment in the obese mice and counteracted diet-induced activation of inflammatory cells called microglia in the brain. β-glucan also promoted signaling to create new synapses in the brain and reversed gut barrier dysfunction in the colon. These results highlight the impact that the Western diet has on the gut-brain axis and suggests that increasing consumption of β-glucan-rich foods may help attenuate diet-induced cognitive decline..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.