Decks checked: October 2026
There is no single dominant neuroanatomy deck. For Step 1, the neuro cards in the AnKing Step Deck are the standard. For a neurology residency or the neuro boards, NeurAnki (5,185 cards) is the only comprehensive option. For your school's neuro block, especially lab practicals, a shared course deck gets you started, but cards built from your own lectures and atlas images are what match the exam.
Neuroanatomy is where a lot of students who were coping with Anki stop coping. The volume isn't the problem. The problem is that the subject asks for two different kinds of memory at once: recognizing the inferior olive on a brainstem section, and reasoning from "left hemiparesis, right CN III palsy" to a lesion in the right midbrain. A deck that only does one of those leaves you half-prepared, and most shared decks only do one.
Anki itself is not the question. In one national survey of US medical students, 68.3% of respondents to the resources question used Anki (see our medical student Anki statistics). The question is which deck covers neuro well enough for the exam in front of you.
The AnKing Step Deck has over 30,000 cards for USMLE Step 1, 2 and 3 and is maintained on AnkiHub with weekly updates. It is tagged by resource (First Aid, Boards and Beyond, UWorld and others), so you can unsuspend only the neuro cards that match the lectures or videos you just finished. AnKing grew out of older community decks such as Zanki. Access is through an AnkiHub subscription. See our AnKing deck guide for how the tags work.
Best for: Step 1 and the neuro parts of Step 2 CK. Weakness: board-style text cards, very little practical-style structure identification on the kind of specimens your lab uses.
NeurAnki is a neurology residency deck from The Neurotransmitters, built for the RITE and the neurology boards. According to the team's AAN 2025 abstract, it has 5,185 cards across 13 subspecialty subdecks, was written by 115 contributors from 28 countries using Comprehensive Review in Clinical Neurology as the main source, and was released on 24 August 2024, then uploaded to AnkiHub in September 2024. It is far beyond what a medical student needs for Step 1, but it is the most complete neurology deck that exists, and neuro-bound students sometimes start it during their neurology clerkship.
Several students have shared the decks they built for their own neuro course. They are useful as a structure and for gap filling, but none is current or comprehensive:
Before using any of these, open twenty random cards and check them against your own lecture slides. A course deck from another school covers what that school emphasized, which may not be what yours does.
| Deck | Size | Built for | Maintained | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AnKing Step Deck | 30,000+ cards (all subjects) | USMLE Step 1, 2, 3 | Yes, weekly | AnkiHub (subscription) |
| NeurAnki | 5,185 cards | Neurology RITE and boards | Yes | AnkiHub, The Neurotransmitters |
| Medical School - Neuro Deck | 2,686 notes | One school's neuro block | No (2015) | AnkiWeb, free |
| Neuroanatomy | 566 notes | Structure identification | No (2018) | AnkiWeb, free |
| Ana's Neuroanatomy/Neurophysiology | 657 notes | A combined course | No (2022) | AnkiWeb, free |
Card and note counts are from AnkiHub, the NeurAnki abstract and AnkiWeb, checked October 2026.
For boards, pre-made wins. Step 1 neuro is standardized, the AnKing cards are tagged to the resources everyone uses, and writing your own Step-level neuro deck is weeks of work that someone has already done well.
Your school's neuroanatomy course is different. Lab practicals use your school's own brain specimens, slices and MRI images, and lecturers emphasize different tracts and syndromes. A board deck won't show you the coronal section your lab tags with a pin, and another school's course deck uses another school's images. For the course exam, you need cards from your own lectures and lab material, with the board deck running underneath for long-term retention.
Neuroanatomy needs three kinds of card, and most students only make the first.
Use Anki's built-in Image Occlusion note type (Anki 23.10 and later) on brainstem sections, coronal and axial slices and MRI. Hide one structure per card. Use the same section at least twice, with different structures hidden, so you learn the neighborhood rather than one label.
Break each tract into its stops, one cloze per stop. "The dorsal column pathway decussates in the {{c1::caudal medulla}} as the {{c2::internal arcuate fibers}}." Ten small cards per pathway review faster and fail more usefully than one card listing the whole route.
Exams give you deficits and ask for the lesion, or give you a lesion and ask for the deficits. Make both cards:
Add the vascular territory to every syndrome card. Stroke questions almost always link the deficit to an artery, and learning them together is cheaper than learning them twice.
Twenty to thirty new cards a day is workable during a neuro block alongside other courses. Image occlusion cards take longer, so drop toward twenty if most of your new cards are images. Turn on FSRS, tag cards by lecture so you can build a filtered deck before each exam, and don't let reviews pile up during the block, because neuro builds on itself week by week. Our Anki settings for med school guide and the Anki settings guide cover the details.
Related guides: Anki decks for anatomy, Anki decks for physiology and Anki decks for psychiatry. Or see Anki decks for med school for every subject we cover.
StudyCards AI handles the text half of a neuro block. Upload your neuro lecture slides as a PDF and get question and cloze cards for the pathways, syndromes and blood supply your lecturers actually taught, ready to download as an Anki .apkg file. It does not make image occlusion cards, so build those yourself from your lab images. For board prep, stick with AnKing.
Try StudyCards AI FreeFor USMLE Step 1 and most medical students, the neuro content in the AnKing Step Deck is the best pre-made option, because it is maintained and tagged to First Aid and Boards and Beyond. For a neuroanatomy course with lab practicals, add image occlusion cards from your own atlas or lab slides, since no shared deck matches your school's images.
Yes. NeurAnki is a neurology residency deck of 5,185 cards in 13 subspecialty subdecks, built by 115 contributors and released on AnkiHub in 2024. It is aimed at the RITE and neurology board exams.
Make one card per lesion that goes from location to deficit, and a reverse card that goes from deficit to location. For example: a lesion of the left medial medulla gives right-sided weakness, right-sided loss of proprioception and left tongue deviation. Testing both directions matches how exam questions are written.
Yes, for structures you need to identify on cross-sections, MRI or brain specimens. Anki has a built-in Image Occlusion note type from version 23.10. Use text cards for pathways and lesion logic, and image occlusion for identification.
Twenty to thirty new cards a day is a workable pace during a neuro block if you are also studying other subjects. Image occlusion cards take longer to review, so lower the number if most of your new cards are images.
Generate Anki flashcards from PDFs