There is evidence that the active handout is an effective teaching aid when other approaches may not be appropriate. I am a teacher of physiology and my main teaching expertise lies in the area of functional neuroanatomy, in particular those nerve pathways in the brain underlying movement and emotion. My cohort includes 3rd Medicine, 2nd Physiotherapy and Radiography and 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Science. Previous experience with another type of teaching aid i.e. the 'wet' neurophysiology practical convinced me that this approach can be unreliable in a group setting and lead me to the idea of the active handout whereby disorders of movement (e.g. hyper- and hypokinetic disorders) and emotion (e.g. schizophrenia) can be explained in terms of disorders in a specific nerve pathways in the brain. The idea behind the active handout is that the student employs the handout as a template upon which to place more information gleaned from the lecture. For example, when the lecturer explains disorders of movement (e.g. Parkinson's Disease) the student, using the active handout of the motor circuit can note the changes in serial and parallel processing in this nerve circuit. The same applies for schizophrenia in term of a disorder of the limbic nerve circuit. The active handout can also be incorporated in a computer-aided learning (CAL) setting and the performance of the student can be graded subjectively. A properly completed active handout also acts as a valuable study aid for the student. Examples of original active handouts relating to motor and limbic nerve circuitry and in a CAL setting will be shown.The author acknowledges grant support from University College Dublin, Ireland, The National Neuroscience Network (Ireland) and Enterprise Ireland.