Neuroscience for Pre-Clinical Students

Neuroscience for Pre-Clinical Students, written by Renée J. LeClair and edited by Anita Walz, covers neuroenergetics, neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and selected amino acid metabolism and degradation. This USMLE-aligned text is designed for a first-year undergraduate medical course and is meant to provide the essential biochemical information from these content areas in a concise format to enable students to engage in an active classroom.

Scope and Educational Focus

With its focus on high-yield concepts, this resource will assist the learner later in medical school and for exam preparation. The text assumes that the students will have completed medical school prerequisites (including the MCAT) in which they will have been introduced to the most fundamental concepts of biology and chemistry that are essential to understand the content presented here. Hence, it does not cover neurophysiology and neuroanatomy; and clinical correlates and additional application of content are intended to be provided in the classroom experience.

Primary Book Contents

The core material is organized into the following specialized sections:

• Neurotransmitters: ACh, glutamate, GABA, and glycine
• Neuropeptides: neuropeptides and unconventional neurotransmitters
• Amino Acid Metabolism: specialized products and degradation

Institutional Development and Accessibility

This text was created specifically for use by pre-clinical students at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and was based on faculty experience and peer review to guide development and hone important topics. To ensure quality, this book has undergone single-blind peer review by two external reviewers. Furthermore, Virginia Tech Publishing is committed to making its publications accessible in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The Pressbooks, PDF and ePub versions of this text are tagged structurally and include alternative text, which allows for machine readability.

Publication Identifiers and Data

Key administrative and identification details for the text are listed below:

• Author: Renée J. LeClair
• Editor: Anita Walz
• Publisher: Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in association with Virginia Tech Publishing
• ISBN (PDF): 978-1-949373-80-6
• ISBN (ePub): 978-1-949373-81-3
• ISBN (Print): 978-1-949373-84-4
• License: Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.21061/neuroscience
• Digital Distribution: Also distributed by LibreTexts and Virginia Tech Pressbooks