How to note: the review

(ttstam @ Flickr)

A review: the closest thing to a magic potion when revising

If you have done stage 1, you’ll know what a course is about before you dive into it.

I would say next on the agenda is to organise the course up into its different bits, leaving out anything you have decided to jettison. Now you have your work cut out.

Choose an area and head to PubMed (or alternative), type in the area you have settled on, add “+ review” on the end (e.g. “eating disorders + review”) and press 'Search'. Sort the results so as to have the most recent first.

With a bit of luck, what you'll have now is a review paper*. A review paper is an exciting thing; the more recent, the more exciting. It’s exciting because it means less work: someone much more familiar with the material has done all the legwork for you.

So, to carry on with the eating disorders (neuropsychiatry) example here's what I'd do:

One, I'd remind myself of the course blueprint, it’s all in the brain, but the brain isn’t everything. Two, as I read through the review paper, I'd have my senses sharpened to spot 'neural footprints'...it appears there is a lot of evidence showing right hemisphere damage. That’s something to note. But I'm also on the look out for more holistic explanations than this though. What is causing these right hemisphere lesions? There’s a load of stuff on methodology, and its at a grim level of detail. I’ll skim over that. Stuff on DSM-IV and how it’s being a bit behind, blah blah blah; interesting but irrelevant. Ah! A big juicy section on external causes…media effects…introduction of TV in a remote village causes increased incidence of eating disorders, that’s a good one!...both pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy seem to have efficacy...and so on.

Hopefully, you get the idea. Find a review, call to mind the course blueprint and allow it be a light. Note what it illuminates and ignore the dark bits.

*If there are no reviews available, find a few recent experimental papers; their introductions should act as mini-reviews. Compare and contrast though because that way you tease out the picture and cancel out the researchers’ selection bias.