Quick start
Book Reader
Whole-book search + original PDF pages — jumps to the exact paragraph.
Practice Exam
MC with explanations.
Study Lab
Process maps, Radial map, Match, Super map and Mind map for Exam 2.
Mistakes
Everything you got wrong, grouped by exam and topic; review it or download it.
Sheets
Fill-in practice and diagram sheets per Exam 2 lecture, checked on the spot, graded by Claude.
Study Guides
Chapter 4 in short lines, one PDF per lecture plus the whole exam.
Lecture Slides
The lecture decks as PDFs: Lectures 13 to 16 for Exam 2.
Course facts
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Course | NEUR 1520-850 — Introduction to Neuroscience I · 3 credits |
| Format | Fully online, asynchronous — no scheduled meeting time |
| Canvas | mynu.instructure.com course 21198 |
| Instructor | Ernest Chivero · ernestchivero@unomaha.edu · Allwine Hall 419A |
| Required text | Watson & Breedlove, The Mind's Machine 5e — Oxford Insight, via Canvas only |
| What is in the e-text | E-book · assignments · graded activities · videos · quizzes · readings · an AI study assistant |
| Semester | Aug 24 → Dec 18, 2026 |
Note the e-text is not a passive reading — graded activities and quizzes live inside Oxford Insight, so it is part of the gradebook, not a reference you can skip.
Your teaching team — 5 office-hour blocks a week
This is an unusual amount of live human access for a fully async course. Three people, five windows. Use them — async courses punish silence.
| Day | Time | Who | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | 11:30 am – 1:00 pm | Charlotte Clark (TA) | Zoom |
| Tue | 9:30 – 11:00 am | Sayka Alam (TA) | ASH 404G |
| Wed | 3:00 – 4:00 pm | Ernest Chivero (instructor) | Allwine Hall 419A |
| Wed | 4:00 – 5:30 pm | Charlotte Clark (TA) | ASH 404b (in person) |
| Thu | 1:00 – 2:30 pm | Sayka Alam (TA) | ASH 404G |
🎯 Wednesday afternoon is the block to protect
3:00–5:30 pm Wednesday runs continuously — Chivero 3:00–4:00 in Allwine 419A, then Charlotte Clark 4:00–5:30 in ASH 404b. Bring the hard conceptual question to Chivero first, then walk over and grind the mechanics with the TA. If you protect one recurring slot all semester, protect this one.
| Contact | Office | |
|---|---|---|
| Ernest Chivero — instructor | ernestchivero@unomaha.edu | Allwine Hall 419A · Wed 3–4 pm or by appointment |
| Sayka Alam — TA | saykaalam@unomaha.edu | ASH 404G |
| Charlotte Clark — TA | charlottecharliecl@unomaha.edu | ASH 404b (Wed) · Zoom (Mon) |
⚠️ Two details in the syllabus contradict themselves — verify before relying on them.
- Charlotte Clark's email — the text displays
charlottecharliecl@unomaha.edu, but the link behind it points toamccartney@unomaha.edu, likely a leftover from a previous TA. Send the first message to the displayed address. - Sayka's surname — written "Alum" in the syllabus, but the email is
saykaalam@unomaha.edu("Alam"). The email is the safer bet for spelling; confirm in office hours before writing it on anything that matters.
The real textbook — The Mind's Machine 5e
⚠️ Chapter → week mapping is not confirmed yet
Below is the actual chapter list of the 5th edition. What is not yet known is which chapters this section covers and in what order — that lives in the Canvas Modules tab. The "I" in Intro Neuroscience I plus the course description (cellular/molecular, neurons and glia, neural communication, sensory processing) points strongly at the front half, roughly Ch 1–7, with the behavioral half likely belonging to NEUR 1530. Treat that as a reasoned guess, not fact, until Module 0 and the Modules tab confirm it.
| Ch | Title | Fit to this course's stated scope |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Structure and Function: Neuroanatomy and Research Methods | Core — anatomy + methods |
| 2 | Neurophysiology: Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals | Core — communication within/between neurons |
| 3 | The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology | Core — synaptic transmission |
| 4 | Development of the Brain | Likely — cellular/molecular |
| 5 | The Sensorimotor System | Core — sensory processing |
| 6 | Hearing, Balance, Taste, and Smell | Core — sensory processing |
| 7 | Vision: From Eye to Brain | Core — sensory processing |
| 8 | Hormones and Sex | Probably NEUR 1530 |
| 9 | Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment | Probably NEUR 1530 |
| 10 | Biological Rhythms and Sleep | Probably NEUR 1530 |
| 11 | Emotions, Aggression, and Stress | Probably NEUR 1530 |
| 12 | Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders | Probably NEUR 1530 |
| 13 | Memory and Learning | Probably NEUR 1530 |
| 14 | Attention and Higher Cognition | Probably NEUR 1530 |
| 15 | Language and Lateralization | Probably NEUR 1530 |
Sanity check on the guess: the course description names "the anatomy and function of neurons and glia, communication within and between neurons, and how neurons interact to perceive and process sensory information." That sentence maps almost one-to-one onto Ch 1, 2, 3, and 5–7.
Still missing from the syllabus
📋 What this page cannot tell you yet
Everything above comes from the course welcome page. These pieces are still needed before this hub can be genuinely exam-useful — most live in Module 0 and the Syllabus tab:
- Grading breakdown — how Insight activities, quizzes, and exams are weighted
- Exam schedule — how many, when, proctored or not, cumulative final or not
- Module → chapter mapping — the one that turns the table above from a guess into a plan
- Late work + attendance policy — and whether async means hard weekly deadlines
- Generative-AI policy — worth checking directly. Insight ships its own AI study assistant, so AI is clearly permitted inside the courseware, but that says nothing about outside tools. Confirm before using the AI chat on this site for graded work.
Send these over and this page gets rebuilt around them.
Know your instructor
Ernest Chivero
Neuroinflammation and substance use. Works on microglia, the NLRP3 inflammasome, and HIV-Tat — how immune signaling in the brain is altered by drugs of abuse and viral infection.
What to expect from that: glia are unlikely to be the throwaway half-lecture they are in many intro courses. When The Mind's Machine covers neurons and glia (Ch 1–2) and neuropharmacology (Ch 3), expect the immune-brain angle and drug mechanisms to get more airtime than the book alone would suggest.
Working an async course
- Student reviews rate him highly (~4.7/5 RMP) for clarity and organization, while flagging the course as content-dense. Both can be true: kind instructor, lots of material.
- Async is the real difficulty, not the content. Nothing forces you to keep pace — build a fixed weekly slot before week 1.
- Two TAs is a lot of support for a 3-credit online course. Silence is the failure mode; there are five windows a week where it costs you nothing to ask.
- Accessibility accommodations run through ASC (104 H&K · 402.554.2872) — request early.
Free supplementary references
Graded work comes from Oxford Insight only. These are for building understanding when a chapter refuses to click.
- Oxford Learning Link — The Mind's Machine 5e student resources (publisher, free)
- NCBI Bookshelf — Purves Neuroscience (full free text)
- MSU Open Textbook — Introduction to Neuroscience (free, closely matches this course's scope)
- Noba Project — free behavioral-neuroscience modules (matches Mind's Machine framing)
- MIT OCW 9.01 Intro Neuroscience — full lecture course
- MIT 9.01 lecture notes (PDFs)
- Khan Academy — Neural communication (doubles as MCAT prep)
- Ninja Nerd — Neurology lectures
- Ernest Chivero — faculty profile
- Oxford University Press — The Mind's Machine 5e (publisher page)