Purpose
Consistent with a two-pass, lecture-based pre-clerkship curriculum, our medical school’s legacy curriculum included a foundational neuroscience course during Year One and a nervous system disorders course during Year Two. During this second-year course, students often struggled to recall and connect the foundational science that they learned many months ago during the first year, and no active learning was required. To address these challenges, we implemented two substantial changes during a curricular refresh: 1) designing an integrated clinical neuroscience course and 2) implementing weekly team-based learning (TBL) sessions.

Methods
A team of experienced educators including a behavioral neuroscientist (the course director), the psychiatry clerkship director, and the neurology clerkship director reviewed neuroanatomy, neurology, psychiatry, pathology, and pharmacology educational guidelines. Additionally, we consulted with 14 biomedical science thread directors at our institution (a public allopathic medical school in the United States) and reviewed pre-clerkship neuroscience course calendars from 3 peer medical schools. After drafting a course calendar, we identified weekly themes and topics for the TBL sessions.

Results
A nine-week Brain and Behavior course was created for Year Two medical students that included neuroanatomy, neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry, neuropsychopharmacology, neuropathology, and nervous system infections. Having the neurology and psychiatry clerkship directors on the team promoted vertical integration of clinical disciplines into the course. Once-a-week TBL sessions were designed to integrate content from the prior week. Each session began with a readiness assessment test to encourage learner preparedness. The organization of the new curriculum, including objectives, weekly themes, and TBL session topics will be shared with fellow educators.

Conclusion
The aforementioned curriculum development process has resulted in a pre-clerkship course that better integrates clinical neurology and psychiatry along with their foundational sciences. The team-based learning sessions have resulted in weekly active learning within the curriculum.