I took this course my senior year and I think it was one of my favorites in my undergraduate career. The course had a good storyline which made the sequence of topics easy to follow. Professor Izquierdo is very articulate and it makes a lot of confusing topics from the past comprehensible. She also gives good outlines of test material so you have an oriented way to study. I this this class had a good level of accessibility to neuro, psychobio, and psych majors.

I sincerely enjoyed this class with Professor Izquierdo. Professor Izquierdo was truly concerned about her students learning and understanding the concepts taught in her class. There was no busy work assigned, and the readings were interesting science papers reviewed in class. Professor Izquierdo was very available and willing to speak with students both about lecture topics and the term paper.

Psych 119A was by far one of the most intriguing classes I have taken at UCLA, and focused on more than just blunt memorization of psychology facts. Professor Izquierdo's class forces you to take concepts taught in class and apply them to conceptual questions for the midterm and final. Although this was tough, studying was far less monotonous than the average psychology class. The questions were given in advance so one could prepare a question based on an investigation of lecture notes and readings. If you work hard and focus on what she says in lecture it is definitely possible to get an A in this class.

I thoroughly enjoyed Izquierdo's pharmacology course 119A. I have since graduated from UCLA and found that this class is quite relevant to my job researching intellectual disabilities at the UC Davis MIND Institute. This course provided a foundation of knowledge that allowed me to understand the mechanism of action of the investigational product (IP), or study drug, used in UC Davis clinical trials for fragile X syndrome and pediatric bipolar disorder. Additionally I was able to have informed discussions about Parkinson's medication with a neurologist that I shadowed.

Another helpful part of the class was the exercise of reviewing scientific literature. Izquierdo selected interesting papers which discussed the use of various psychotropics such as methylphenidate or tetrahydrocannabinol. She picked apart each paper in lecture and explained her thinking about the results and research methods. This course helped me understand neurobiological changes in the brain's reward pathways following chronic substance abuse.

The midterm and final were challenging but fair because Izquierdo gave the class a study guide beforehand with all the potential short answer and essay questions. There were plenty of choices for the term paper prompt, so I was able to choose a topic that interested me. Overall the workload was very reasonable. I would recommend this class to anyone who is interested in pharmacology or biomedical research.