Case of the Day

Our Brain, Mind, and Behavior block had a case of the day contest, which was incredibly fun. Several times a week, our course director Andy would present a challenging case, usually involving a radiologic image, strange history, or video. We had to figure out the diagnosis. It was very addicting and very fun. I'm not sure why, but I would get obsessed with figuring out the case, spending hours on Google, Wikipedia, and medical resources to identify the disease. Most of them were odd, rare diseases like recognizing the pulvinar sign (bilateral thalamic hyperintensity) on brain MR or locating the lesion of bitemporal hemianopsia. The detective work of these puzzles was kind of thrilling. I feel like I learned a whole lot about how to research signs and symptoms as well as a host of fascinating diseases. Active learning is so much more effective (though time consuming) than passive studying. In any case, case of the day was ridiculously fun, and I would love to keep it alive.