This course was online when I took it so take that with a grain of salt. However, it seems like everything was kept exactly the same. Overall I read only my own presentation paper, participated a good amount, and wrote my final paper in 3 days. That plus attendance got me an A+. Highly recommend this class for any neuro majors looking for an easier elective. I also took this as a junior with 101C and another neuro elective. Of the three, this class had the least effort necessary.
Instructors:
Carlos is a gem. He's funny and charismatic, super helpful, and really just one of the most insightful professors I'll probably ever have. His long-time TA Samiksha is moving to med school so not sure how the new TA will be but Samiksha was basically in charge of monitoring our participation and helping grade papers and the presentation.
Point Distribution:
25 points for class participation
25 points for a paper presentation
50 points for a 10-15 page paper
+ A million opportunities for extra credit (placing top 3 in kahoot, extra presentations, etc.)
Work Details:
Class participation includes attendance and actively making comments/discussing with peers. Online it meant asking questions and responding to others' questions, but in person, I was told it was basically asking a question once a class. It's calculated as a weighted average so if there's a particularly low-energy class where no one participates, it doesn't ding you. People's questions are a mix of good questions, super complicated ones for no reason, and ones that don't make sense but are solely to get participation credit. Please don't be the last one. Online it was about 3 participations per class.
The presentation is supposed to be 15 minutes but tons of people go over and the TA said it does not help your grade to do so and often reflects more poorly in the grade. Carlos looooooves figures so use as many as you can. You present in a relay-style and then have a 20 minute-ish game that all four presenters help make. Choose your presentation week wisely as you cannot write on the same disease as you present on. All presentations are done on Wednesdays. You also answer questions after the presentation.
The paper is 10-15 pages on a disease discussing its neuropathology, current treatments, and personal recommendations for treatments. Options include AD, HD, PD, epilepsy, narcolepsy, FFI, etc.
Personal experience:
Class participation was stressful because it's fast-paced and doesn't leave a lot of time to process. If I had it to do over again, I would read at least one of the articles beforehand and come up with a few questions in advance. That being said, I had relatively high participation even without it. We aren't told final amounts, but during Week 8 I had a 24/25 and participated extra in the last three weeks to try to beef it up.
Presentations are relatively low-stress in nature but almost everyone stresses out about them. If you're like me and had a paper with no figures, don't stress it, but also don't make the slides too text-heavy. Be nice and make the game easy/fun for your peers. There are usually more papers than class members, so presenting extra papers can get you extra credit or extra days on the paper due date. Additionally, the first group to present gets extra credit because you have like 3 days to do it. Try and be this group because it's neurogenesis instead of a disease. You can email and ask for your grade, but again they don't tell you if you don't ask.
The paper is kinda vague. Recounting the disease is easy, but the novel treatment/personal evaluation of treatments is kinda hard. It's not hard to hit 10-15 pages. You could easily do this any weekend in the quarter and be done with it. I basically did it Monday - Wednesday of the week it was due and life was okay.
Final grades:
I'm not usually the person who gets A+s in a class but I think that speaks to the grade distribution here. For some perspective I got an A in 101A, P in 101B, A in 101C, B+ in 102, A in biochem 153A, and an A in my other neuro elective. So they really are quite generous.

This course has a pretty low time commitment compared to other neuro classes, but I learned a lot. My advice: sign up early for the presentation to get it over with, say something once a class to get participation credit, and start early on the paper. Highly recommend if you're looking for a neuro elective, but enroll early--it's a pretty small class and fills up quickly.

Such an great guy! The class is amazing, and I learned so much about Parkinson's, Huntington's, epilepsy, sleep disorders, etc. He has done some amazing research, and it was so interesting to hear about it. The class doesn't have any tests, and all you have to do is show up, participate, give one presentation, and write a paper at the end. And almost every week he has a speaker come in (one week was a neurosurgeon who brought a little kid who'd had half his brain removed...so amazing). And besides, check out the grade distribution.

Take this class if you can!