Humanatomy

Having trouble learning all those facts about the many bones and muscles of the body?

I recently ran across a great set of resources that help you quickly learn the bones and muscles of the body.  A group called Humanatomy, led by teacher Paula Jaspar, has a YouTube channel loaded with short video clips that quickly help you through the parts of the human body's framework.

And they are putting the finishing touches on an iPad game that helps you learn anatomy in a really fun, multisensory way.  You can get the Humanatomy app when it's ready in a few weeks if you contribute to their Kickstarter campaign.

Learning experts tell us that we learn more efficiently (faster and deeper) if you use multiple senses, if you practice in many short spurts, and if you make a game of it.  The Humanatomy approach incorporates all of these ideas in their resources!

To check out their library of FREE videos go to The Humanatomy Channel on YouTube.

To check out their fun app for learning anatomy, go to the Humanatomy Kickstarter page.

You can learn even more by following the Humanatomy blog, where you can also sign up for their free newsletter with learning tips and follow them on Twitter.

Here are a couple of their videos to get you started:

Bones: Elbow Complex

Muscles: Sternocleidomastoid Muscle

Is spelling important?

In A&P, correct spelling could be a life-or-death issue.  Really.

The topic of correct spelling—and the consequences of incorrectly spelled terms—was brought to mind a while back with the news story about a student on the TV game show Jeopardy! whose answer was disqualified because it was misspelled. A lot of folks were angry, as though the boy was cheated, but the producers calmly pointed out that it’s not an acceptable answer if it’s not spelled correctly.

Just like Scrabble or Words with Friends, Jeopardy! is a game with rules, after all.

But the A&P course is not “just a game.”  It is the foundation for many health professions.  Professions where misspellings can be the basis for life-threatening medical errors.

Most A&P professors serve humanity by enforcing accuracy in our courses—including correct spelling of scientific and medical terms.

Here’s what I tell my own students:

“That's part of learning how to communicate accurately and professionally. For those of you going into patient care or managing patient records, accuracy can affect a person's life . . . so it's best to learn that lesson here and now—where no one's life is in danger.”

There really IS a difference between perineum  (area between the genitals and the anus) and peritoneum (membrane covering your intestines and lining the abdomen).  Just two letters, and the whole meaning of a sentence or paragraph—or medical record—is changed. It may still make sense when you read it, even in context, but it is now wrong.  Perhaps deadly wrong.

Some A&P students counter that current software platforms used in hospitals and clinics have safety features that autocorrect or call attention to potential errors.  That’s true—to some extent.  But just like the autocorrect features found in word processing software, they cannot be relied upon entirely. We really must know which term is which by its correct spelling.

Now’s a good time to think about how how serious you are in preparing for your profession.  I want my healthcare providers to get it right.  You should, too!

Adapted from an earlier article at The A&P Professor

Blood typing game

Here's a nifty little game that helps you practice applying principles of blood typing.  The game has you type the blood of a series of "patients" then figure out which blood units are appropriate to use in a transfusion.

It's pretty simple IF you know the principles of blood typing.

First, review blood typing in your textbook.

Then try your hand at this game:


If you can't see the game in this blog window, go directly to my-ap.us/SYuJXo

Protein folding game

A&P students should be aware of the basic elements of protein folding:

Your textbook describes how the primary structure (a sequence of amino acids determined by the genetic code) is folded into a twisted and pleated secondary structure, then folded again into a complex tertiary structure.  Sometimes, tertiary proteins are combined to form quaternary proteins.  Sort of like origami, but way more useful. And way tinier.

I'd like to mention a interesting phenomenon related to protein folding and "citizen science" using an online game called Foldit.  


The Foldit game is an online puzzle game in which anybody can try their hand and finding which way a given protein folds most efficiently.  Interestingly, this has proven to yield useful results for biochemists not obtainable by traditional methods.

If you like video games . . . and the idea of actually contributing to scientific knowledge intrigues you . . . why not try your hand at Foldit?

Want to know more?

Online Gamers Achieve First Crowd-Sourced Redesign of Protein
Jessica Marshall & Nature magazine
Scientific American Online January 22, 2012
[Brief article about recent redesign of a protein by online gamers using Foldit. Original paper published in Nature Biotechnology]
my-ap.us/wRK2bV

Foldit Online Protein Puzzle
Scientific American Citizen Science accessed 23 January 2012
[Brief description of the online game Foldit and the goals of the project.]
my-ap.us/zIV75F

Foldit - Solve Puzzles for Science
[Direct link to portal for the game Foldit]
my-ap.us/wfRQPF

Painless memorization with Quizlet

Understanding anatomy and physiology often begins with building a foundation of basic terminology and identification of structures by name and location.  Yikes, that means memorization.  

A lot of folks dread memorization tasks because they simply don't know how to do it in a quick, pain-free manner. Once you know the tricks of memorization, it's not that bad.

The essential trick is to practice, practice, practice. 

That means every day, several times a day, if possible.

However, this will only work if you spend just a few minutes at a time practicing.  If you try to get in all in one long session, it won't work . . . or at least least is won't work very well.  In fact, the "long session approach" can sometimes burn you out so badly, it'll be hard to make yourself study the same topic again.

One of the easiest ways to practice painlessly is to make and use flashcards.  I have a previous blog post and a study tip web page and even a YouTube video devoted to methods of using flashcards to study A&P effectively.

My friend Monica Hall-Woods (another A&P professor) reminded me recently of a website called Quizlet.com where you can easily make a set of flashcards online (for FREE) and use it to study and to quiz yourself.  In fact, Quizlet.com gives you some alternative methods to quiz yourself, including some fun, game-like activities.

The more practice sessions you do on Quizlet.com, the more you'll almost effortlessly pick up the basic facts that you are trying to learn.  Quizlet.com helps you keep track of what you've studied and how you are doing.

You can also upload photos from Flikr.com . . . which means that you can take photos of your lab specimens with your smartphone, then upload the images into a set of flashcards!

Another great feature of Quizlet.com is that you can form study groups.  This allows one or more users to post and share sets of flashcards related to a particular topic.

Quizlet.com also lets you use flashcard stacks that others have created.  (Warning: be careful those you use are accurate before using them to study.)  Here's a stack of cards that I created simply by cutting and pasting a list I already had into the Quizlet.com editor:

Bone Marking Types

Try it!  Use different options for quizzing yourself and playing games. I think you'll have fun with it. Which is the point . . . the less pain, the more gain.  At least in this case.

Let me know what you think!  And use the comment feature (below this blog article) to post your favorite Quizlet.com sets you've made or found . . . so other A&P students can benefit.

Whack a Bone!

Want a fun and FREE way to get started in learning anatomy?  Try the games at Anatomy Arcade.
These arcade-style games are a wacky way to quickly pickup the the basics of human anatomy before you dive into the details.  Or should I say "whacky?" . . . because one of my favorites is Whack a Bone (a parody of the famous Whack a Mole arcade game).

In Whack a Bone, you quickly learn the names and locations of the major bones of the skeleton, one region at a time.  Even for an old pro like me, I found the Whack a Bone games to be fun.  The games include won't help you learn any of the foramina of the skull or the other detailed features and regions of each individual bone.  But they will help you get started by quickly learning the bone names and their shapes and locations and relationships to other bones in a painless and fun way.

Some of the other games found at Anatomy Arcade are

• Poke a Muscle
• Match a Brain
• Digestive Jigsaw
• Eye Jigsaw
• Match a Body System

All these games are meant for learning the body's structure at a very elementary level . . . exactly where all A&P students need to start.  You cannot get to the details until you have learned the basics.

Let me know what you think about the Anatomy Arcade games!  (post a comment here)

Build your own body!

I recently came across a website where you can build your own body.  It's called Anatomography and it's really fun.

Using the online editor at Anatomography you start out with a complete skeleton.  You can adjust the opacity (how transparent the bones are) or the color of your skeleton . . . or delete it if you like.  Oh, and you can change the background color if you like.

You then add organs from a library of pre-drawn organs.  Any organs you like. Make each one a different color or perhaps color-code them by system.  If you want to remove organs you've added, that's easy.

At any point, you can rotate or tip your body to the desired perspective. Like the image shown here, where I included the spleen (red) and tilted the body so you can see its position easily.

You can save your image to a file or the program will provide you with a URL where the image is located so that you can share it with your friends . . . or the whole class.  (You could even share it with your professor!)

You can also get a URL that links to your image within the editor, so that others can start with your image then add to it or change it in other ways.  This could be great for a study group to share the building of a system . . . or a whole body.

Besides being a fun toy to play with, this could really help you understand the anatomy of the human body by building and unbuilding it . . . rotating it around to different angles . . . highlighting different areas with different colors . . . making organs translucent so you can see through them to nearby organs . . . and more.

It's also a great tool to produce images for your flash cards, your concept maps, your class notes, PowerPoint slides,  and other study tools.

Because your textbook and lab manual cannot possibly illustrate every organ at every possible angle, the images you produce with Anatomography can help you visualize organs that you otherwise would have a hard time visualizing.

The program isn't perfect.  For example, the only skeletal muscle in the available library is the diaphragm.  But for other systems, the library is fairly complete.

What uses can you think of for Anatomography?