Anatomy, Histology, Embryology III

In this semester the focus changes to theory, brain, neurons, tracts, and more brain. After the hands on experience that occurs in the second semester, this seems like a step back. In the whole semester I did not dissect once, however the amount of reading from books, notes, and guides increased dramatically.

How to pass
Try to spend some time away from physiology to read about this subject

For the first 5 weeks focus solely on the anatomy of the brain

Be able to identify where a section of the brain has been made

Be able to identify the anterior or posterior side of a brain section

Go to the lectures based on the brain anatomy but skip the lectures on anatomy and histology until the first midterm

The Theme book will contain the all the information you need but it is not easy to understand

In this semester more than any other you should ask your teacher to explain concepts that are no clear to you

If you have to miss lectures to catch up on other subjects then this is the one as it will be repeated in your practicals

At least one cranial nerve is asked about in incredible detail so know them all

Know the basics, many students failed within a minute because they could not identify the parts of the fonix or the corpus callosum yet knew the every broadmann's number

Learn at least 2 sentences about each topic from the website topic list, saying nothing will fail you, saying somthing will maybe pass you

This semi final will be shorter, from 3-4 hours depending on the number of students left in the year

The exams
2 midterms:
 * 1 Brain anatomy:
 * 6 rooms with 15 pins in structures to identify
 * 40 min to complete including moving from room to room (so... run!!!)
 * 1 Oral theology:
 * 5- 15 min test on your knowlege of eye, ear and neural anatomy

Semi Final:
 * 3 parts:
 * Anatomy:
 * Oral test 3 parts:
 * 3 from:
 * Head and neck section, brain sections, nerve theory
 * Histology:
 * Oral exam:
 * 2 slides, identification and theory
 * Written exam:
 * 2 parts
 * Embryology questions, diagram labelling
 * Questions on anything from the semester

All must be passed with more than 50% or a 2

Failure at any point in the anatomy or histology will result in retaking the entire test

Failure at the written test will result in the retake of just the written test

The difficulties
This term's subject cannot be seen in the most part and a good imagination will help

There is so much to learn in this semester from books that it can get overwhelming, ask your teacher what should be focused on as you can end up doing work that will not likely be asked in the test

Tracts of the spinal cord are very difficult, the lecture notes will give you an idea of the important ones to learn

The difficulty of each exam part is dependant upon the examiner and their knowledge of that particular area

In this department, histology is more focused upon than anatomy

Conclusion
Like all the previous, the oral test is very luck based, you can get and easy examiner or a hard examiner. Plus now the examiners may recongnise you, which may be a benefit, but mostly not. If you can dedicate time to the subject during the semester then this subject will be not be difficult but that is not always the case so try to do some studying when you can to ease the semi final burden.