Directional Terminology

0:01 hello in this video i'm going to do a little review of directional terminology uh this should be familiar to you from your previous anatomy classes that you've taken so this should be a quick review so starting with anatomical position so it's important anatomical position is important because whenever we describe any kind of movement or location of structures in the body it's always relative to anatomical position sometimes you'll hear me talk about um you know what plane did this movement happen in relative to anatomical position well the assumption is always relative to anatomical position unless you have reason to think otherwise so unless i say

0:49 that the shoulder was flexed or that i give you some reason to think that the body was not an anatomical position always assume that the body is an anatomical position so that position is exactly what you see in this picture here it's just looking straight ahead toes pointed forward palms facing forward everything else in extension and neutral position supine and prone supine means face up prone face down when it comes to the forearm and you've got supine and prone uh you can think of it as like supine holding a bowl of soup prone pour the soup out um and so you can look at that you look at you can look at it that way

1:35 for the whole body too like the bodies face up supine holding a cup of soup and then pour it out turn it over okay directional terminology so this is where we get into our terms to describe locations of structures and things in the body so these are all paired except for the last one intermediate they're all paired with their opposite so superior is up inferior down cephalic and caudal uh those aren't used as commonly with humans but you will hear those terms used like if depending on what um research articles you might be reading they might use those terms but cephalic means toward the head

2:21 cuddle towards the tail so i'm sure you can see why that's a little bit confusing in humans more or less it's kind of synonymous with superior and inferior except once we get past the tailbone now which way is toward the tail so it gets a little bit confusing so let's use more often in quadrupeds you know dogs and cats and and so on um because toward the head and toward the tail makes the most sense so cephalic towards the head cuddled towards the tail which is mostly the same as superior and inferior but not for the lower extremities anterior and posterior anterior towards the front of the body posterior towards the back of the body again ventral and dorsal isn't aren't

3:06 used as much with humans as they are with animals but you will see these especially in like neuroscience papers and things like that ventral is belly side dorsal is backside so think of like the dorsal fin of a dolphin that's the fin on their back um so in humans anterior is the same as ventral posterior is the same as dorsal but you'll see anterior and posterior used more often with humans and ventral and dorsal more with animals medial towards the midline of the body lateral away from the midline of the body ipsilateral means on the same side of the body contralateral on the opposite side of the body

3:52 so you that's used like if a patient comes in and let's say they tore their acl on the right knee and they're having contralateral hip pain that means that they're having left hip pain so ipsilateral and contralateral are terms that we use to describe where something is relative to something else in terms of is it on the same side of the body or the opposite side of the body uh proximal and distal we only can use on the limbs and we don't use this on the head we only use these on the upper and lower extremities so proximal is describing the location that's closer towards the trunk distal further away from the trunk and always

4:38 we use these terms to compare two things so we couldn't just say like the elbow is distal the elbow is distal to what is the question the elbow is distal to the shoulder the elbow is proximal to the wrist so all of these terms here we're always using to describe the relative location of two different things so proximal and distal we only use them on the arms and legs superficial and deep superficial towards the surface of the body deep is deeper um you know at a deeper layer than the most superficial so these are those are easier terms because those are commonly used english terms that we use in daily life so superficial towards the surface

5:25 deeper deeper than that uh intermediate is our only one here that is not in a pair intermediate just means that it's between two structures um so like the nose is intermediate to the eyes or in the feet we have three cuneiforms in each foot or three of our tarsals so we have an intermediate cuneiform that's the one in the middle that's between that's sandwiched by the two other cuneiforms um so make sure you know these really really well practice these i recommend if you have a roommate or someone that you can go through these with uh that you quiz each other or classmate i guess you'd quiz each other roommate could quiz you

6:12 um but make sure that you can name any two structures in the body and be able to provide the appropriate terms to describe the relationship so like the sacrum is what to the belly button or the nose is what to the shoulder so make sure that you can describe relative locations between any structures in the whole body and keep in mind that there isn't always one exact right answer like the nose to the shoulder there are a few things that we could fill in the blank there with so be able to list them all um you know the nose is superior to the shoulder the nose is medial to the shoulder the nose is cephalic to the shoulder um just as some examples so just make sure that you're able to use these really fluently without really having to even think

6:57 about it so see in our next clip