The reality is that PSYCH 115 is a difficult class. Students complaining about detailed slides, difficult exams/quizzes, and heavy memorization strike me as somewhat delusional—behavioral neuroscience isn't meant to be easy and neatly curated for consumption and naturally will involve memorization and lots of work. For instance, yes it may be a little monotonous to memorize parts of the neural circuit responsible for the vestibuloocular reflex, but how else are you going to understand it on a meaningful level? A vague understanding like "your eyes account for motion to focus on an image" is simplistic and even contrary to science. Anyone who has worked in a lab knows that research is conducted at a very fundamental, detailed level; you can't do this type of work unless you understand the details.

As for the class, I do have some critiques. I felt that Dr. Blair lectured far more efficiently than Dr. Adhikari, who often took twice the amount of time to cover the same amount of material—this would result in monstrous review sessions over 4 hours long or poorly paced lectures (however, I am certainly grateful that Dr. Blair/Adhi would often stay the duration of these review sessions to help students with questions). Readings are also somewhat excessive. Tip for future students: unless it is for the weekly quiz, there is no need to do the readings as exams will predominantly test on lecture material. In general, make flashcards from lecture, review them frequently (Anki is helpful for this) and you will do well.

With that being said, I feel that describing Dr. Blair/Adhi as "horrible lecturers" gives future students the wrong idea. The class is hard and that means detailed, dense lectures—that doesn't mean Dr. Blair/Adhi themselves did not do a good job delivering this information. It was clear from lectures and how they answered students' questions that they cared about student learning and DID do a good job conveying this information. Take everything you read on Bruinwalk, especially for more notoriously difficult classes, with a grain of salt (including my review of course).

I had taken GE Cluster 73 (Mind Over Matter) prior to taking this class (the cluster covers neuroscience), so I had a pretty solid foundation coming into this class. Compared to the cluster, this class was much more surface-level when it comes to neuroscience concepts. However, it didn't mean that I didn't need to study incredibly hard before each exam.

Because I had heard a lot of bad things about the class, I was FREAKING out before every exam. I went over the PowerPoints so I knew every detail of the concepts they covered (I didn't memorize the slides - I learned the concepts), and whenever something was a tad bit foggy, I went and reviewed the BruinCast and took dedicated notes. I also did concept maps to test my mastery of the material. Turns out, the exams were way, way more simple than I had imagined them to be. They aren't easy per say, but if you study hard you will do well. I would recommend living and breathing those PowerPoints and BruinCasts for a few days before each exam and you should do well. I felt the exams were very fair, except for the short answer on the second exam. That part was graded so haphazardly and strangely that even the TAs were pissed off about it. The exam format ended up going back to multiple choice and fill in the blank (like the first exam) partially due to this.

The textbook is pointless except for the quizzes which are given in section. It is IMPERATIVE that you read the chapters assigned for the quizzes very closely. I made a Quizlet to go along with each textbook chapter, focusing on the bolded terms and important concepts covered. My tip is to study the graphs and diagrams! Maybe I'm the only person who glosses over the diagrams in textbooks, but I got hit hard on the second quiz because it tested directly from the graphs/diagrams, of which I didn't even take a cursory glance at. Luckily we we were able to drop our lowest score, and after I beefed up my studying on the diagrams I got 100% on the remaining quizzes.

As for Dr. Blair and Dr. Adhikari, I have never been in a class where the teaching style was so . . . bland? I don't know how to describe it other than I literally would go to class, take notes, pay attention, do my Clicker questions, and somehow emerge with zero knowledge of what I was taught. I literally HAD to rewatch large swaths of the BruinCast to get the information down because during lecture it just passed through one ear and out the other. However, I do have to say that Dr. Adhikari was worse for me in this respect because I ended up watching most of his BruinCasts at 1.5x speed to learn the information again. In my other classes, I always emerge with a good sense of what I learned but in this one I left each class with little to nothing. Something must have gotten in there though, because I still remember the concepts perfectly weeks later.

All in all - I would take 115 with Blair and Adhikari again. The exams were fair, the material was super interesting and fun, but bland lecturers and hellishly long review sessions that aren't super helpful when you could just review the information again for yourself.

Psych 115 is a lot of material to study, but very interesting. I loved how Stan teaches the lecture as he is very fair and knowledgeable about the subjects. If you are interested in the pdf copy of Behavioral Neuroscience 8th edition for cheap, text me at 661-292-9419.

Contrary to what most people seem to be commenting about Blair, he's actually one of my favorite profs at ucla. He is an engaging lecturer with very well-made slides and even self-animated videos. His lectures have a fantastic flow, and you understand how each slide informs the next. Yes, the class is heavy and very memorization-based. But Blair is a fantastic prof to take the class with.

The Class was one of my favorites in terms of material (neuroscience) but workload for the midterms (3 midterms no final) was pretty rough. It was basically all memorization from the slides presented in class. Blair was a pretty good teacher in teaching but seemed to not really care for the students. Overall, the class was average but the material was fun to learn.

This class could be so interesting, but Blair and his co-professor Adkihari managed to suck the life out of it. They are both horrible lecturers and the class is just incredibly dense. They love to put the most obsecure details on the tests. There are quizzes every week based on a whole chapter from the book (about 30 pages of reading). These are usually more general questions but they still suck because this material isn't relevant to the midterms or final so it's just extra material to stuff your brain with. Even my TA was unenthusiastic and bored with the course. It is a shame that UCLA can't offer a class like this that is actually engaging with professors that care about their students overall learning and not memorizing every little detail on the slides.

Blair is an awful lecturer. He lectures like you are an expert on the topic, and there is so much content and all the knowledge required is so detailed. You essentially have to memorize an entire textbook's worth of content.... and if you're not premed/don't absolutely HAVE to take this class/don't know much science -- don't.

INCREDIBLY dense content

There were weekly quizzes which were testing VERY SPECIFIC parts of UNRELATED textbook chapters. (The reading required for the quiz was on a chapter in the textbook that wasn't covered in class/in the course/completely irrelevant)...

If you're not good at science. Just don't

Be prepared for a Blair, who glazes over slides, and expects you to look at the slides and magically understand the material. Pretty bad teacher sadly, because the class material is actually very interesting.
For the exams, memorize the slides (even the details you think are irrelevant) because his exam questions are extremely detailed.
He's not a helpful guy though - he doesn't support students in their psych endeavors and he's pretty uptight when you ask him for advice.
all in all, okay class. but don't take it if you don't like biology.

Blair doesn't seem to have many updated reviews, so I'll give my two cents on him. I liked the course. The stuff we learned was interesting, and I feel like it's really relevant to stuff you need to know for the MCAT, so really grateful for that. Blair himself...he's not the best professor honestly. He's really nice and tries to make things fair, but here's a few things I didn't like: he's sometimes unclear in his explanations, expects us to know small details on his lecture slides that he sometimes glosses over or doesn't even explain, and very late in posting lecture slides (quite dense, so I found it hard to follow in class without having looked at the material beforehand). He does have a discussion board though, which was helpful I guess, until he stopped responding like halfway through to them until the exam approached. Anyways, he's an okay professor, but I guess out of all the professors that seem to teach this class, he's not a bad choice.
Exams, in my opinion, were overall fair as long as you knew the lecture slides by heart. Look over everything, seriously. But, you can get by if you took classes like LS2 (lots of material retested in this class).
I hated discussion, to be honest. Mostly because the quizzes were difficult, even if you read the whole textbook. Also, one point is literally one percent of your entire grade, so really unfortunate. You do get to drop your lowest grade though, so good luck. Reading took up quite a bit of time, and there's lots of vocab terms to know. Luckily, there was a format to follow I guess. One fill in blank (study bolded vocab terms), and two MCs related to textbook reading. Otherwise, section was fine, and TAs were helpful.
There's a bibliography assignment, which isn't too bad, and there's clicker questions, which he's not really familiar with (first quarter he's done clickers), so if there's issues, he'll be like welp I tried, there'll be more opportunities. Good thing about clickers is you only need a certain amount of points throughout the whole quarter (20 points out of 60 possible). He gave 1 point for right answers, and 1/2 point for any answer, so definitely reachable.
Overall, I liked the class. Professor wasn't super great, but definitely not the worst I've had (everyone has their flaws, so understandable), and his tests were quite fair, so I'm thankful for that. Not much room for error though, so take this class wisely. Good luck!

Blair is simply not a good professor, should not be teaching at all. He might be a decent scientist though.