Using Online Images to Teach Quantitative Skills via Comparative Neuroanatomy: Applying the Directives of Vision and...

Vision and Change calls for increasing the quantitative skills of biology majors, which includes neuroscience majors. Accordingly, we have devised a module to give students practice at regression analyses, covariance, and ANOVA. This module consists of a quantitative comparative neuroanatomy lab in which students explore the size of the hippocampus relative to the brain in 62 different mammalian species-from an anteater to a zebu. We utilize a digital image library (with appropriate metadata) allowing students to quantify the size of the hippocampus as well as obtain an index of the size of the brain in these various species. Students then answer the following questions: (1) Do brains scale with body size? (2) Does the hippocampus scale with brain size? (3) If we control for body size, does the hippocampus still scale with brain size? (4) How does the hippocampus change as a proportion of brain size? (5) Is the proportional scaling of the hippocampus different among primates, carnivores, and other mammals? (6) Do the data provide evidence for mosaic or concerted evolution? Measures of the pedagogical efficacy showed clear and significant gains on a PreTest vs PostTest assessment of material related to the module. An open ended qualitative measure revealed students' perception of the purposes of the module, which were consistent with the learning goals. This module utilizes open access digital resources and can be performed at any institution. All the materials or links to online resources can be found at https://mdcune.psych.ucla.edu/modules/cna.