Open Educational Resources, or OERs, are educational materials that have been made publicly accessible and free to use. They are useful for teachers and professors who wish to adopt them for their classes, which make classes cheaper since students do not have to buy any textbooks. They are also useful for the general public, who may want to learn more about academic topics without having to pay for access to a textbook.
There are many well known OER repositories available, some of them including OER Commons and OpenStax. While these resources provide lots of educational resources for all variety of topics ranging from mathematics to economics, they may not include some of the most popular neuroscience OERs.
Many of them are licensed under a Creative Commons agreement, which allows for reuse for non commercial reasons.
Below is a curated list of reputable OER websites that provide you the tools to learn neuroscience for free. Most of these OERs can be used as a complete textbook for classes. They are arranged in no particular order.
Open Neuroscience Initiative, by Dr. Austin Lim
Dr. Lim is a professor at the College of Science and Health at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. The textbook is 16 chapters long, and covers the typical range of topics expected from undergraduate Introduction to Neuroscience courses, including cellular neurobiology, substance use and pharmacology, sleep and circadian rhythms, sensory and perception, the motor system, learning and memory, and emotion. The text is written at a level that is also appropriate for students of biopsychology and nonmajors neuroscience courses.
The text is in total 370 pages, and is available as a pdf download. It has been described in an article in the Journal for Undergraduate Neuroscience Education.
The full textbook can be downloaded from here through DePaul’s webpage, or from the author’s personal website.
2. Neuroscience Online
Neuroscience Online is written by several faculty members from the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Texas.
The text is divided into four major sections, ranging from topics in cellular and molecular neurobiology, sensory functions, motor functions, and higher brain functions. In total, 50 chapters make up the full text. Some sections may be useful for undergraduates, but some of the more specific chapters are best for graduate level and medical level neuroscience.
There is also a companion site, Neuroanatomy Online, which is a series of interactive educational labs that are designed to teach the basics of neuroanatomy.
The page can be accessed here from the UT Health Systems website.
3. Neuroscience: Canadian by Dr. William Ju
Dr. Ju is a professor in the Human Biology Program at the University of Toronto, Canada. His textbook is divided into four units, covering a total of 27 chapters. It covers introductory material, and spends time discussing neurodegeneration, as that is Dr. Ju’s specialty. There is a strong emphasis on the novel techniques used in the field and their applications for understanding the brain.
It can be accessed from the University of Toronto pressbooks page.
4. Neuroscience, 2nd edition, by Dr. Purves et al.
Dr. Purves is a professor who teaches in the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. The most recent editions of his textbook are standard in many neuroscience courses, but the 2001 2nd edition is freely available. Although the oldest textbook on this list, many of the basic principles described in these 31 chapters still hold true. It covers a wide variety of topics.
The full text is available from the NIH, but cannot be browsed.
5. The Brain from Top to Bottom by Dr. Bruno Dubuc
Dr. Dubuc is a professor at McGill University in Canada. His OER is an interactive website called "The Brain from Top to Bottom”, and is designed to teach the foundations of brain and behavior at several levels. It covers several topics from sensory and perception, movement, sleep, memory and amnesia, and even topics like consciousness.
There is also an active blog associated with the website where new informational posts are added regularly. These posts include material that is likely of interest for students of neuroscience, and can also provide ideas for lecturers who are looking for concrete examples of lecture content.