Making neuroanatomy easy
BMJ 2007; 334 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.0706217 (Published 01 June 2007) Cite this as: BMJ 2007;334:0706217
- Oluseye Abimbola, final year medical student1,
- Adelola Adeloye, honorary president2
- 1Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
- 2World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies, Switzerland
Neuroscience is fascinating but unfortunately notorious for being a difficult subject. The most common reasons are “poor teaching” followed closely by “problems related to neuroanatomy” and “the difficulty of the clinical examination.”1 Better teaching is one way to solve the problem.
Can you identify the structures from the sagittal section?
The language of neuroscience
Every first lecture in neuroscience should introduce neuroanatomical terms. Latin and Greek terms can sometimes make learning difficult.2 Students should be encouraged to develop an interest in classical languages and to regularly look at medical glossaries and dictionaries to understand the etymologies.
Reflecting on the origin and original meaning of terms may help to demystify terms such as aqueduct (canal), cauda equina (horse tail), sella turcica (high arched Turkish saddle, which describes the pituitary fossa), and so on. Neuroanatomical terms also make more sense if teachers use anglicised versions-for example, medial mammillary nucleus rather than nucleus mamillaris medialis.3 This allows easy correlation …
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