Article review-Neuroplasticity-Biology Life Sciences
Order instructions:
The Abstract and Author Summary sections are brief synopses: the abstract is written for science research databases and the author summary is written for laypeople. Read these over, but spend the majority of your time and energy on the 4 main sections. Pick one section at a time to read, annotate, outline, and research. You will want to schedule one or two days for reading, etc each the 4 main sections (Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results & Discussion), which means it will take you between 4-8 days on this part.
1. Introduction – answer the following questions in your notes:
What is the background information, i.e. what was previously discovered about this topic?
What is the hypothesis? Note that the hypothesis will not be written as an If-Then statement (in case you have been taught that all hypotheses are written this way).
What is the dependent variable?
What is the independent variable?
2. Materials and Methods – answer the following questions in your notes:
What model did the researchers use – a type of mouse, a cell culture, a location, etc?
What are the general protocols or techniques used to test the hypothesis?
Google these techniques to make sure you understand how they work. If you can’t find a simplified explanation, email me (hoganj@centralvirginia.edu).
What are the test conditions/treatments used?
3. Results – answer the following questions in your notes:
Locate the graphs. You may want to print a full page of each graph from the article page on the PLoS website.
What is the title of each graph?
What is the variable on the X axis? And the Y axis?
Read the Results section.
What was the outcome of each experiment?
How is this outcome depicted in a graph/picture/table, etc?
4. Discussion – answer the following questions in your notes:
Do the results of the experiments support or falsify the hypothesis?
How do the results of the experiments compare with the previously discovered information?
Write notes in your own words to paraphrase and explain each section. After you have outlined a section, ask yourself if you could explain this to another student.
Once you have done this, put the article away and use your notes to write one or two paragraphs summarizing each sections.
This will not look like a typical 5 paragraph essay, like you might have written for an English class. You will have 4 sections with 1 or 2 paragraphs in each section.
