The Illustrated Neuroanatomy Glossary
is a multimedia hypertext environment
that gives the beginning student of the nervous system
access to terminology and, through a large catalog
of images, presents several different ways of looking
at the brain.
On the lower left, we see the control panel
for the Neuroanatomy Glossary application.
Students can ask for information about nervous system
structures, substances in the nervous system,
such as enzymes or neurotransmitters,
and processes, such as growth or disease.
Here, we're searching for nervous system structures
by their name.
And we can ask for structures that either begin with
or contain a word or set of words.
Here, we're going to ask for structures
that begin with the word corpus, Latin for body.
We'll get a scrolling menu that is actually
a window onto the entire list of some 1,300 terms,
a position such that entries beginning with the word corpus
are at the top.
After repositioning and scrolling
through the list of it, the user picks the term corpus callosum.
And then we'll zoom back to see the user place
the electronic page for corpus callosum on the screen.
The Glossary page has text on the left shown through MIT's
postscript previewer.
With controls on the bottom, we're
going to the next and previous page
and searching from the text.
On the right, there's one of several video illustrations.
Here, we're looking at the corpus callosum,
the band of fibers that connects the two hemispheres,
from above.
The user can start and stop the video at any time or change
to the second illustration.
In the second illustration, we look at the brain cut in half.
Now we're looking at the midline and seeing
the corpus callosum in this delimited video sequence.
The user can rewind the video and play the sequence again.
Here, the user flips back to the first illustration.
Now we show that this page with text and video
is a fully-functioning member of the ex-Window system.
It can be moved.
It can be turned into an icon that contains the entry's name.
And it can be re-expanded from that icon.
The second way of searching is to look for entries
that contain a word or phrase.
Here, we're bringing up the name dialog box again,
and we're going to look for entries that
contain the word comissure.
We get a scrolling list of just those entries that
meet that criterion, and we choose anterior comissure.
Here, the page for anterior comissure
overlaps the page for corpus callosum.
Anterior comissure has two illustrations.
These are cross-sections of the human nervous system where
the fiber bundles have been stained dark
and the regions of cell bodies are light.
These sections are aligned, such that if they're played through
at 30 frames a second, one appears
to melt through the brain.
The pages are independent.
Here, we're pulling up the page for corpus callosum
and looking at it again.
A third way of searching is to branch from words in the text.
Here, the user is highlighting the words lateral ventricles,
presses the button Search, lateral ventricles
becomes the current topic, and we bring up that page.
Lateral ventricles has three illustrations--
cross-section slides, a dissection sequence,
and a three-dimensional model.
Here is a three-dimensional computer reconstruction
of the entire ventricular system.
The lateral ventricles are shown in blue.
The final method of searching is via a system of cascading
or hierarchical menus.
For purposes of introduction, the brain
can be looked at as a set of overlapping hierarchies.
The regional hierarchy takes us through the anatomical regions
and successively reveals their components.
Here, looking through the components of the telencephalon
or forebrain, we find a structure
of the basal forebrain, the caudate nucleus.
Thus, the menus show us the structure
of the nervous system, as well as providing access
to information.
Another way of looking at the brain
is as a set of functional subsystems,
such as systems for vision or movement.
Here, as we look through the motor system hierarchy,
we find that the caudate nucleus is
part of the extrapyramidal motor system.
Other hierarchies could be added,
providing different views.
We choose the caudate nucleus as the current topic
and show its page.
The Illustrated Neuroanatomy Glossary
aids the beginning student of the nervous system
by providing multiple access paths to a rich verbal
and visual vocabulary.