#130 overall
Medical Neuroscience
Coursera
3 recommenders · 5 threads · recommended in 4 years, 2016–2019 · score 3.3
A large Coursera course covering the medical and clinical side of neuroscience, taught by a professor commenters praise as an excellent lecturer. Commenters describe it as one of the biggest online neuroscience courses, with many hours of video.
Commenters call it one of the best courses available online and say the professor is a great teacher whose lectures are easy to listen to and learn from.
Science & Engineeringintermediatefreevideo lectures#neuroscience#medical neuroscience#physiology#biology#coursera
Recommendations by year
20062026
Well, it very much depends on ones goals and ones context, doesn't it? Which impacts what ones brain pays wants and what it focuses its attention on, and what it filters out no matter how much you attempt to cram it in.
What I found a revelation and a bug eye opener - yes as a (CS degree) programmer - was: medicine, chemistry (and org. chem and bio.chem), biology. From Coursera and edx.org. When I did this it was all completely free, now they put some restrictions on some courses (Coursera more so than edX), for example that as a non-payer you cannot do all the exercises.
Even when/if the linked courses are over, accessing there content should still be possible. The courses are free, a certificate is not necessary. Some homework or exams may not be available for non-payers.
Best (university level introductory) course for biology: https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-biology-the-secre...
Bio-chemistry: https://www.edx.org/course/principles-of-biochemistry
Physiology: I actually found a lot of lectures on Google better than any of the online courses, start from https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=physiology+
Fundamentals of neuro-science: https://www.mcb80x.org/ followed by "Medical Neuroscience" on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience -- easily one of the best courses out there
A very simple course combining (very simple, beginner level) programming and (basic) biology: https://www.edx.org/course/nature-in-code-biology-in-javascr... -- what's interesting here for a programmer definitely isn't the Javascript code, but asking biology questions that can be answered with (even simple) code.
Staticstics is a huge part of medicine and biology - plenty of good courses on probability, statistics (all levels) and courses using R or Python, here a random example course: https://www.edx.org/course/statistical-analysis-in-bioinform...
On so many more levels than I can briefly write down here this "field trip" into bio-sciences felt soooo much better than learning yet another programming language. Let's keep in mind, regardless of C++, Haskell, Javascript, and/or whatever framework, the hardware underneath all of it is all the exact same architecture. Looking at differences between the programming languages now seems to me like looking at a surface that to a naked eye looks completely smooth, but if you zoom in far enough with an electron microscope it looks like a messy mountain area. But when you do that you lose sight of the big(ger) picture. The excourse into (organic and bio-) chemistry and biology helped me get a better sense of where we are, at least it feels that way. The neuroscience helps remaining grounded (and getting more cynical) when reading popular headlines about "neural network" and "AI" and the like.
Usually yes - but it depends. Anything programming related I rarely like as a lecture and completely agree with you, unlike it's general concepts and then it depends, see below. I'm an avid reader, so historically I always favored reading and only the last few years did I get a more nuanced opinion with exposure to new subjects and lecturers.
On the other hand, when I took "Medical Neuroscience" [0], a pretty heavy course with 16 hrs/week ~25 hours (or was it 35?) lectures total (the 1st edition of that course - I have not checked if they made any changes to the edition online now, Coursera switched to a different course format), at least for the duration of the course I ignored the textbook [1] even though I had it. The lecturer was mesmerizing, I just started the videos and listened for hours - and actually learned. The fact that most of the time you do want to take that textbook (even for this exact same subject) is that it's exceedingly rare to find such a specimen of a teacher.
Similarly with basic physiology lectures, even though they were done cheaply and he has stopped making new ones Aaron Mullally's lectures are of the same kind, I could just listen and listen and learn stuff. I tried many different ones, all of them prepared more "professionally" (I don't like that word because the dirtiest and cheapest solution can still be more professional than the one with the best packaging, but you know what I mean, I hope).
Math, physics, chemistry, biology: It depends (so the same), I found lectures - I guess that actually means I found lecturers - that at least for me are better than learning the same from a book. Another example where given the choice between book and lecture I would take the lecture any time: [3] (and that is 100% because of the person giving the lecture).
[0] https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience
[1] http://www.sinauer.com/neuroscience-621.html
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0JRvRB-VkJ3yeSEdXpe9ew
[3] https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-biology-secret-life-...
I recommend you browse through some of the lecture videos of this (free) Medical Neuroscience course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience
It's probably way too big a course for someone only casually interested, but it's probably the best (free, but maybe overall) course available on the Internet for an introduction into the subject. Mostly because the professor is great.
The TL;DW is that neuroscience is mostly about your "bio-electrical hardware". So nothing soft there at all. Do review it, this is such an interesting field. A good course for even more fundamental fundamentals is this (pretty big and still free) multimedia course from Harvard, which I'd say is aimed at high-school level students: https://www.mcb80x.org/
What you have to understand on the medical side is that there is not much they can do for brain conditions. Surgery is mostly about stopping bleedings and "cutting away stuff". I took a little clinical neuroscience course and it was mostly "we don't know where this comes from", "here we can only treat side-effects", and actually nothing about actually healing anything at least for the various disorders covered in that course. "Brain issues" have the disadvantages that it's harder to do anything since a) it's much more risky (compared to trying and failing fixing a skin condition), b) it's much harder to get drugs there, c) it's harder to do surgery in the brain.
So the science is pretty solid on the very low level, but on the scale of a full human brain there it gets way too complex. So the higher-level you go the more it's (interpretable) statistics, the lower you go the more it's (pretty solid) (cellular or molecular) biology, (bio-)chemistry and/or physics (electricity). They find new but essential things all the time even now, the field still feels "fresh" as in you have no difficulty finding things that need research and still are somewhat basic. The problem is that the really interesting stuff, the things that matter because it's needed for actually doing something about disease or malfunction, all are high-level, and knowing well what goes on in "a" (i.e. one) neuron (or even a group) does not help you that much in clinical practice.
So on a clinical level neuroscience is as much "science" as most of medicine as a whole.
Occasionally I see posts, for example on reddit but also discussions here, about what other programming languages a programmer could learn as the next (and higher) step in ones ongoing education.
My suggestion for what to do after the CS degree, a road I took myself during the last few years, is to go to edX (or Khan Academy for any missing basics) and at the very least take MITs "Introduction to Biology", which actually is an introduction to genetics (when you learn biology you first have to understand cells). Also, neuroscience, for which there are many courses (longest one on Coursera, "Medical Neuroscience", with an excellent teacher), from the basics (https://www.mcb80x.org/) to computational neuroscience (https://www.edx.org/course/computational-neuroscience-neuron...).
I found understanding the basics of biology a lot more informative than learning new twists about some functional programming concept. It introduces you to a massively(!) parallel world where statistics rules, and errors/outliers are actually essential to functioning biological systems. You may find that if you remove all errors, for example that a protein is made that is not supposed to be made because it's not supposed to be needed, actually is essential, because only by making it does the cell notice that a different (better) fuel option has become available (that is from a concrete example, see the linked course :-)). So definitely add plenty of statistics courses until you learn to think "big". Each time you think about a problem think about that thing happening a trillion times instead of individual cases, until this becomes a habit. This helped me a lot, because most people focus their mind on single examples, for example when making suggestions how to improve society (hint: suggestions that sure work for anyone, but if everyone tried it would quickly unravel). Okay, in the last two sentences I'm going out on a limb (claiming that learning biology and statistical thinking helped), but definitely try some biology, statistics and neuroscience guys. It's all free and most of it high quality. And the statistics knowledge is just as good for machine learning so you need that anyway.
Also recommended: "Principles of Biochemistry" (https://www.edx.org/course/principles-biochemistry-harvardx-...), although I would say you should not try to do all the exercises because it will be way too much work (and highly demotivating, looking at how the discussion forum shows how the nr. of students very quickly grows thinner from course section to section) to try to learn all that stuff by heart. Also: "Cell Biology: Mitochondria"( https://www.edx.org/course/cell-biology-mitochondria-harvard...) to understand where the power comes from.
Also check out individual universities, some have a lot of free courses (sometimes using the edX platform software, which is open source, e.g. Stanford) hat they don't put on 3rd party platforms like edX.
Free excellent courses:
Start with "Fundamentals of Neuroscience" by Harvard, free multimedia course that requires only a high school level education:
https://www.mcb80x.org/
then go to
"Medical Neuroscience" on Coursera (the professor is a great teacher):
https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience
Especially the 2nd course is pretty big, on of the largest online courses there is in terms of videos to watch and things to learn. But while it is a lot it is much easier than the quantum mechanics course(s) half the size on edX. You don't have to think much, just listen and learn.
Aft hat you have a very solid foundation, now check out more such courses on the same platform.
When we developed antibiotics we thought we solved the problem. Now we are looking at more and more strains of bacteria resistant to all we got. We have to keep going, turns out we are not done developing antibiotics, forever.
So, as I see it, this might show that once we "cured cancer" (I know, there is not "one cancer", and that there won't be that one drug, it's more a dynamic equilibrium), when we think we made it we might find out that the threat develops too and cancerous cells may come up with completely new ideas. Red Queen hypothesis, in a way. I know the article says they have not seen any such thing in humans, but when we developed antibiotics the ones we see now weren't there either.
A little OT:
The new public release version of that new cancer like thing will be open source, as always, and also as always that is of little use because the code is a mess and deciphering it takes as much time as writing it new from scratch... on the other hand, whenever I looked at source code of major projects it reminded me a lot of what biological processes would come up with, just as messy, you can only patch the immediate problem, probably introducing 10 new ones in the process. Especially when they rely on automated testing to replace understanding - patches that pass the tests are accepted (keep fiddling until they do), until nobody understands the code any more a hundred developers and years later.
Sometimes software developers ask what new programming language to learn for self-improvement. Inevitably a lot of languages from Haskell to Python to whatever are mentioned. I think that's all aiming way too close to what those people already know. I would recommend - biology and neuroscience! It's easy and free these days, e.g. "Introduction to Biology" on edX, "Medical Neuroscience" on Coursera after the fundamentals from Harvard at https://www.mcb80x.org/ - plus probability and statistics (edX, Coursera - many very good courses).
Only some random musings triggered by reading that article.
Anecdote time.
Just for background story before I come to the music:
I had chronic heavy metal poisoning diagnosed almost a decade ago (fortunately I had all relevant values - hair, blood, urine significantly elevated, usually chronic exposure is much harder to prove). Using chelators for years I got amazing recoveries, for example, for a few months each time after getting a chelator IV (DMPS, DMSA) the area around the side of my thyroid was "working". It was the side that was double-sied with a cold nodule, tested and seen decades ago and again just before the chelation treatments started (going to the endocrinologist again was part of my desperate search for answers that ended when I finally had the crazy idea it might be heavy metals, something only "crazy people" think, but which the lab results fortunately supported). The nodule had disappeared and the thyroid was normal size when I had the endocrinologist do another UV check because I had that crazy idea that what happened through chelation was just that miracle.
Anyway, to the music (slowly).
My brain for long periods of time was not very usable. Lots of "brain fog", stuff that I had firmly in my hands falling out, periods where I crashed into every obstacle in my flat for no apparent reason, hands shaking when I was holding my kindle (had to hold it with two hands), lots of word finding issues, extreme focus on details combined with an ability to let go - very disturbing, for example, when (without wanting to) you concentrate on a tiny insignificant detail and cannot think of anything else, this one thing races through your head for hours, and believe me, I'm not talking about anything reasonable or sane here, it is quite extreme. After a few years my brain was doing very very strange things, but with experience of years I knew it now was on the path to recovery. I needed LOTS of time, lying down, and the brain would do very strange things that I cannot describe but which are definitely not part of normal life.
During that time the one thing that helped me was music. My brain needed music! The beat ("time"), the melody. Especially the timing aspect. Music was medicine. And I'm not talking about some "nice to have" psychological needs, I'm talking about a hard requirement. The right music held my brain together and helped it get or remain organized. Of course, I making that statement "by feel", I wasn't hooked up to an EEG, I have no proof, just my own experience. I did take several neuroscience courses (the best one the big one from Duke on Coursera by an excellent teacher[0]) and lots of anatomy, physiology, statistics), during the last few years, but obviously no scientific rigor was applied to the stories of my own experience.
I didn't have music running all the time. in fact I loathe "background music". I needed it during certain times, especially during the first half of the day, and I would go for a walk and with good inner-ear headsets concentrate on the music. Having it play in the background when I'm doing something else would not have helped at all, quite the opposite, my ability to endure distractions was very limited during those years. I did (involuntarily, broken equipment) perform tests of how I would fare with and without the music. I felt much worse without.
I'm not talking about the usual "helps you in a bad mood" kind of benefit. It's impossible to convey unfortunately, I never did and by now I don't have any more the need for that kind of help from music, so I suspect the vast majority of people won't ever experience something similar in their lives.
These days I can easily not listen to music for days, but during the height of my "strange brain activities" I could not, as I said, music was medicine (for my brain).
So the article does not surprise me because I had already concluded such a relationship, including why different people will react very differently.
PS: By the way, I think we can all agree that the Russian Dance from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake is the best piece of music ever written, right? :-) [1]
[0] https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience
[1] https://youtu.be/5wOBNjgCg6M (not actually my favorite peformance, but I could not find the one that I like most so easily)
It's also important to find the right doctor, and this can be very hard. I had always been extremely trusting and never cared about anything - when it came to health, go to the doctor, do what they tell you to the letter, no need to think about anything I have no clue about.
Until the doctor - a professor even - gave me advice in a strange crisis that made no sense. He wasn't wrong, he gave exactly the advice that is current "state of the art" for the condition he diagnosed. The problem was, where did that condition come from? The doc didn't care, his job was done. He had a diagnosis and he gave the recommended treatment suggestion (which consists of working on the symptoms, and very badly so, because they don't understand that condition even though it's quite common). Following his treatment I got a huge candida outbreak (and I don't have chemo or AIDS) the symptoms of which he completely ignored. I later got nystatin and then even got diflucan prescribed for three weeks (it wasn't a systemic infection and yet that stuff helped greatly), both those drugs with huge positive effect, but candida isn't a cause but itself a symptom.
I dug deeper and found the root cause. Then I went and found doctors who actually knew something about it. I got treated at a university clinic by a researcher doc with chelators against chronic mercury poisoning. 5 years later: miracles happened. The last one of many was that the endocrinologist put me back on the table to repeat his ultrasound of my right thyroid, which for over twenty years had been double-size and with a 4mm cold nodule - because the nodule was gone, and the thyroid was almost back to normal size. "I'm amazed" was all he could say several times. During chelation I had had "tissue pain" (can't describe it) for a few weeks right around the right thyroid. There is a lot more, like the psoriasis and the tinnitus and many of other long-term problems that just disappeared.
So I'm glad that I ignored the doctor(s), very, very few would find a chronic heavy metal poisoning. Ignoring a doctors opinion and going out on my own was the hardest thing I ever did in my life.
Internet forums, while indeed and truly often horrible, did help me find the problem. You have to filter out over 90%, but one doesn't even have to be an expert to detect the BS. The rest can be valuable when your doctor doesn't find anything. It's not like doctors couldn't find it - it's just that they don't have the time. The waiting room is full, how much time is it worth spending on the problems of any given patient? Especially "functional" problems where you can't actually see anything even with biomedical imaging.
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Completely unrelated to both the previous story and inside that story to the problem I had, I started learning about medical topics, actually out of boredom initially and then got drawn into it. Hundreds of lecture hours and courses later I now understand the basics of anatomy, physiology, had to learn lots of chemistry, org. chem., biochemistry, lots of statistics (never played any significant role in my CS study or in my life), and neuroscience, over 70 courses in total half of which were medical topics. It feels GOOD to know those things, I recommend it to anyone who has some time left for learning. Neuroscience especially should be a must for CS/IT folks, try https://www.mcb80x.org/ for a start and Medical Neuroscience (https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience) as a follow-up, one of the best courses out there mostly because the professor teaching it is wonderful. Don't just learn functional programming with Haskell or Scala, learn brain! :)