This activity engages students in learning the names of brain structures while moving around the classroom and interacting with each other. In this chapter I describe how to prepare for and conduct the activity. I conclude with some ideas about how this could be applied to any anatomy class, or perhaps even other subjects. I have used this activity in community colleges, but I believe it would be appropriate for elementary/primary school and older as it can be adapted to the specific terms in your class.

Materials and Preparation

Estimated class time: 30 to 60 mins

Estimated prep time to make the materials (which can then be re-used): roughly 40 to 60 minutes

• 3 to 5 large (flip-chart paper sized) brain posters
  • To create the brain posters, I projected the illustrations of the brain from our textbook onto the whiteboard, stuck a flip chart page on the board, and traced the outlines of the image onto the page using a black marker
  • The first time I made three posters: a midsagittal slice, a coronal slice, and a lateral view of the lobes of one hemisphere. Since then I have added the limbic system and basal ganglia.
  • I created duplicate sets of these images so that I could divide the class into groups. I recommend three to five students per group.
• Post-it note notepads with the name of a brain structure written on each Post-it.
  • I hand-wrote the names of all the structures we cover
  • Each group of students received a stack of post-its with all of the structure names
  • The post-it notes tend to show their use and lose their stickiness over the course of a quarter, so I make new ones each quarter.

If you know of some professional and more durable versions of these supplies I would be happy to share the purchasing information and/or other Do It Yourself ideas. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at mgorges@shoreline.edu.

Directions

1. Put all the brain posters on the wall (ideally on separate walls so the students have plenty of space to move around)
2. Divide the students into groups of three to five
3. One student from each group will start as the “surgical robot arm” who will place the sticky note on the poster. However, this student does not know what is written on the sticky note. They must rely on the other students to help them find the correct structure (see next two steps)
4. The rest of the students in the group are the “neuroscientists.” They look at the top sticky note and figure out how to guide the surgical robot arm to the correct location on the brain.
5. The surgical robot arm student starts by pointing to the middle of the poster indicated by their teammates. The teammates guide the “surgical robot arm” to the correct location by telling them to move their finger “dorsal,” “ventral,” “anterior,” “posterior,” “medial,” “lateral,” etc., keeping in mind that some of the directions are not appropriate for all the posters. (For example, in a mid-sagittal view, medial and lateral do not make sense.)
6. Once the surgical robot arm student has their finger on the correct structure the team says, “stop!” and the robot arm student places the sticky note.
7. A new student becomes the surgical robot arm and play continues.
8. The instructor monitors each group to check the accuracy and gives hints as needed.
9. Once the groups have placed all their structures on the brain have them check their textbook and make adjustments if necessary. This helps them bookmark the pages with the important images so it will be easier for them to find the appropriate illustrations when they study on their own, and it helps them form memory connections between the book and class time.

Alternative ending: Have each group leave their sticky notes on the poster and then rotate to the poster of the adjacent group. Then they examine the structures already placed on the new poster by the previous group and see if they agree with all the placements. Any discrepancies are discussed first within the group, then with the instructor, and then with the whole class if necessary to clarify. This allows the students and instructor to make sure that nothing was missed.

Instructions to the students

“In this activity you will be practicing identifying neuroanatomy structures and using the neuroanatomical directions. One student from each group gets to be the surgical robot arm and the other team members are the neuroscience experts. The neuroscience experts can see the name of a structure written on a sticky note and they are trying to get the robot arm to point to that structure on the brain.

“The first surgical robot arm starts by placing their finger in the middle of the poster indicated by the neuroscience team. The neuroscientists call out directions such as, “anterior,” or “posterior” to direct the robot arm to slide its finger across the poster until it is pointing to the correct location. Then the neuroscience group reveals the structure name, the robot arm places the sticky note on the poster, and a new student becomes the surgical robot arm.”

Conclusion

This game is helpful if used two or three times throughout the course: once near the beginning as they are first learning the terms, once as a midterm review, and once at the end of the class. You could add new structures as the course progresses. You can also make many variations on this game. For example, when we studied memory and the temporal lobe I cut out structures within the temporal lobe in different colors of paper related to their functional systems and then had students tape them on like puzzle pieces. I find it helpful in many of the class sessions to have the big brain posters up to keep referencing the structures we are focusing on related to that topic. For some students, having a visual encoding of the structure helps them attach relevant information to that structure and consider how function might in some ways relate to the physical location.

Potential Application Beyond Neuroanatomy

I could imagine using this activity any time we ask students to memorize names and locations. The idea for this activity was probably influenced by my Spanish teacher in high school reviewing the names of the Mexican states on the overhead projector. The large image and repetition time in class felt more effective than my individual time studying. Can you imagine how this could be adapted to geography, anatomy, maybe even architecture, engineering, or automotive? With the right diagrams for the poster images, perhaps it could be helpful for anything that requires learning the names of parts.

Revised: August 2023

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.