This is essentially a scam

This material is not made to be listened to in audiobook format.

It requires the video to be understood, 90% of the first 2 chapters is her pointing at stuff on a (presumably) whiteboard or video-projection we can't see. And instructions such as "This thing here" don't help when all you have is the audio and a PDF with images.

Now, going past that, the books itself presents information in a seemingly very bad way, I haven't gone through all of it (due to the previously mentioned error) but it seems to fall into the age-old mistake of describing rather than exemplifying and explaining.

It concerns itself with describing what the various areas of the brain are called and the history behind the names... but I wanted to understand the FUNCTION of the brain from this books, that's what the title implies, and it doesn't seem to do that, at all.

It's boring, it managed to spend 1 hour emparting literally no information that my brain cared to remember, which is a rather impressive feat, assuming that's what you were aiming for.

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57 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

More Pictures and Diagrams

Hard to follow many portions of the lecture without more illustrations and diagrams included in the PDF.

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13 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

More in depth into neuroscience than expected

More in depth into neuroscience than expected.
Also many references to visual aids I do not have access to.

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10 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

Obviously a video without image

The only frustrating thing is that the professor is OFTEN referring to something to look at, which does not even appear in the accompanying pdf. Feels cheap to cut the audio from a video and call it an audiobook. :/

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7 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

great courses fan here; but this one doesn’t work as audio only

I tried overlooking several references to “look at this place on the brain where I’m touching my finger” or “look at this part of the brain” references to things you can’t see in an audiobook. I checked the PDF and there’s only a couple diagrams and she just didn’t do good enough at describing what she’s referring to in a way I can follow along while listening only.

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4 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

Not for Audio

The professor has some great information and presents it differently than 3 other Neuroscience books that I have read and is excellent because of that. However, the other flaws make it all but unreadable in audio format. The problem was that the professor of the great course selection was teaching as if we were present in her classroom, constantly referring to models, charts, graphics and pictures and pointing to specific areas on the items and saying "as you can see where I am pointing to...." but we CANNOT see as this is an audio book, and when I downloaded and referred to the PDF supporting document, she did not even show any of those supporting documents or objects that we could refer to in order to better understand her references. Should never be an audio book or provide much better support documents. Preview your books before you provide them as a selection as an audio book.

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3 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

I tried... I honestly tried...

With 300 titles in my library and roughly 30 of them "Great Courses", I can safely say that I know how to listen to titles not originally intended for audio. This is the first time I've returned a title because it was impossible to follow without visualizations.

Before giving up, I tried printing some of the graphics from the PDF so I could have them with me in my car, making it easy to reference various regions of the brain when the lecturer brought them up (for example, being able to quickly reference where the "Lateral geniculate nucleus" is located), but it started getting out of hand and didn't do enough to help. Unfortunately, the lecturer often refers to what she's pointing at. For instance, saying, "like the one that's right here on the brain, on this part and this part." Even if the printouts worked, I still wouldn't be able to follow.

I made it through lecture four but decided to stop after that. Sadly, I wasn't able to simply listen. However, the CONTENT seemed great, so I've added it to my watchlist in Wondrium (basically "The Great Courses" rebranded, plus more). I've already watched the first couple of lectures I tried listening to and it's MUCH better. If the content seems interesting and this is a route you can take, I highly recommend it.

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Requires Visuals

This is one of the Great Courses which really does require the visuals to go with the audio. While I am certain the digital booklet of visuals is accessible via Audible, that's just not how I consume this content.

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Solid primer

Solid primer, well delivered lectures. It's a survey so doesn't get too in depth to any particulars.

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Subtle politics/ideology slipped in

There is a lot of information about the different areas of the brain and their function, but there is also a subtle political slant to this course. Most gullible freshman wouldn’t pick up on it and would go on to repeat this political slant as dogma. In other words, it must be true because this professor said it. For example, she claims that shortly after conception males who have a loss of testosterone at a critical point develop a female brain that can never be changed. She has no evidence of this. There is no way to measure the testosterone level of a zygote without destroying it, and then you would have no way of knowing what their brain developed into. Even if you could, you would have to wait for decades and hope the person donated their brain to science to find out what it developed into. It hasn’t been done in any statistically valid way to prove her claim. The claim that female brains can be changed permanently to male brains by exposure to certain chemicals in utero is even more problematic. If it’s true… then there should be a public effort to eradicate these chemicals to ensure normal development. Try telling that to certain groups in today’s society. Try telling them that their development wasn’t “normal.” Try telling them that they are the way they are because of exposure to a foreign chemical and that we are going to get rid of that chemical to ensure normal development and as a consequence deplete their population.
Like I said; most gullible freshman wouldn’t pick up on the political leanings. They hear a learned professor giving 99% accurate scientific information, and they never pick up on the 1% that is the professor’s ideology.

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