>> Hi, everyone.
Welcome to the Penguin Prof Channel.
This is part of my college success series on how
to study anatomy without losing your sanity.
As you probably know, if you're a student of anatomy,
anatomy is all about naming structure.
It's all about memorizing names.
It can be extremely dry and difficult to get all
of those strange names in your head mainly
because the names themselves are very foreign.
Most anatomical names come from Greek and Latin.
Some of them are actually descriptive, if you happen
to know Greek or Latin.
Other names are eponyms.
If you look at a lot of names in anatomy,
they're extremely descriptive, like I said,
and it's really worth your while to get a book
of Greek and Latin roots.
I have some online, but a lot of these words that you're going
to see here, you're going to see them over and over again.
So the more familiar you are with the terms,
the easier it's going to be in the long run.
Eponyms our terms that are named for a person and, unfortunately,
there's no way of getting around it.
You just got to memorize them.
So here are some general tips that I have on how
to get all these structures and all of their names in your head.
The first thing, of course, is to stay organized.
If you have a study guide, that is your lifeline.
You want to make copies of it so you can color
and make notes all over them.
You want to partition out all the things that you need
to learn over the amount of time
that you have before you're tested.
And every day, you want to add new terms,
new structures to your brain.
Study those.
And also review the previous ones
that you've already covered.
I call this "oh, yeah" in your notes.
So you look at something.
You look at the list and you say, okay, I know that and oh,
yeah and close your eyes and see can you visualize this structure
in your head.
If you can, then you're doing pretty well.
The idea here is that the brain learns new things by taking them
and connecting them to information
that you already know.
So that's the key with all of these techniques that I'm going
to share with you today.
You have to make connections if you are going to learn new
and often very foreign material.
So some of the basic techniques
that you've already probably tried include the use of color,
I love the anatomy coloring books, drawing
and writing not only the words,
but actually sketching the parts,
especially if you're a visual learner.
That can be really helpful.
The value of repetition for memorization,
everybody knows, right?
You got flashcards.
They have flashcards that are online.
They have them that you can carry on your mobile devices,
whatever works for you, but you want to use a variety
of different types of material because, otherwise,
your brain's going to get bored.
It can be very numbing if you use only one type of material.
So get yourself lots and lots of different versions
of the same things so you look at them in lots
of different ways from different angles.
And that's what's going to make them stick.
I'm going to talk about storytelling and etymology
when I do the little demo here.
I want to mention mnemonics really quick.
Mnemonics are extremely powerful.
They are memorization tools.
There's a little bit of history here.
There was actually a Greek goddess of memory.
That's where this term comes from.
And basically, they're fun.
They're often sexual.
They sometimes make no sense.
I actually love this one.
It's to help you learn the bones in the wrists, the carpal bones.
"Sacred lovers try positions that they can't handle," right.
So they're stupid, little sometimes rhymes or statements
that help you to memorize things that, quite frankly,
otherwise may not have any meaning for you.
So here we go.
I'm going to use some other techniques in etymology
and storytelling as we approach bones of the skull.
So the first thing that you want to do --
So here's my study guide here, part of my study guide,
for bones of the skull.
And don't panic, okay.
Don't panic.
Start with what you already know.
You're going to have terms and structures
that you may already be familiar with,
so make the easy connections first, okay.
Most people know frontal.
At least it's a word that you're familiar with and, of course,
it's the front of the skull.
So that's not too difficult.
A lot of people know the temporal bones
because most people can touch their temples,
if you ask them to.
Those are the temporal bones.
A lot of folks know nasal, right, referring to the nose.
And you may know the mandible, meaning the lower jaw.
So start with those.
That's pretty cool, right?
S you've already got some terms that you know.
Now, you want to approach the ones that aren't so familiar.
Let's start with the parietal bone.
So let's say I don't know anything about the parietal bone
and I've never seen this word before.
The first thing that I want to do is see if it means something.
So here's some references where you can go and look
up the meaning of words.
And if you look parietal, you'll see where it comes from.
It comes from the Latin, referring to walls.
So basically, if you look back at the skull and you think
about a wall, well, that kind of makes sense.
The parietal bone is an enormous bone, two actually,
that make up a huge percentage of the cranial vault.
So the connection here is tell a story,
something that you can remember.
So the parietal bone surrounds the brain
and protect it just like walls.
So if you can attach something which you already know,
that is a wall, to something that's new,
that's the parietal bone, your brain kind of has a place
to put that information.
So that's kind of cool.
Let's look at another one.
Here's the occipital bone.
So the occipital bone --
By the way, you notice I'm using colors.
I color code my study guide to match the colors
that the textbook uses for each of these bones.
So here's the occipital bone.
I look it up and it means back of the skull.
Okay, well, that's not super, super helpful.
But you might notice that the root of the word is also used
in a lot of terms relating to vision, like ocular.
So it turns out that the occipital lobe
of the brain is responsible for vision.
Okay, well, that's something that I know something about.
So now I can relate occipital bone to vision.
And now look, the professor has two features
on the occipital bone that I also have to know.
I don't know what those are either, so I want to look
at my handy-dandy list of Greek and Latin terms
to see what those guys mean.
A condyle is a knob at the end of a bone.
It reminds me a lot of knuckles.
So I have an image of knuckles
that I can associate now with a condyle.
Foramen means whole, and it comes
from the Latin, meaning to pierce.
Actually, that's still used in Italian as well, forame.
The more languages you know, by the way,
the better anatomy gets.
Now that's kind of a gross picture,
but you're actually going to remember it.
So foramen means hole.
Magnum is a word you probably already know.
It means big or great.
Most people associate magnum with a handgun
from Smith and Wesson.
So now, I've got the occipital condyles here.
Those look like knuckles, right, and I've got the foramen magnum,
which is a big hole, right there in the middle.
So what you want to do is put it all together
and tell yourself a story.
These are the connections that are going
to help you to remember.
The occipital bone is at the back of the head
and protects the occipital lobe of the brain,
which controls vision.
So I've got that all attached there in my brain.
I've got the occipital condyles.
I think about knuckles when I see that term.
I've got these two knuckles here.
And then I've got a huge hole, the foramen,
which I can shoot with a magnum.
Now I admit that that's a strange story,
but what you've done is you've taken terms,
which were completely unfamiliar,
and you've put them together in a story of pieces,
which are familiar, albeit strange.
A lot of people like to have one single image
to put all these things together.
I often look for a single image that can tie my story together
because that, I can remember fairly quickly.
And I found this one.
This is really strange but real.
This is called iGiveUp.
It's a real Bluetooth headset for the iPhone.
Now it's stupid, right?
I mean, everybody would admit that,
unless you just bought one, in which case, I apologize.
But you will remember it, and that's the key, right.
You have to excite your brain
when you are trying to remember things.
And the brain remembers information when it's attached
to emotional experiences.
Boy, the media and advertisers, they sure know that.
So why not use it for your studies?
One of the best ways to excite your brain, of course,
is to be social, study with friends.
It eases the pain and it allows you to share the stories
that you've come up with so you don't have to come
up with all of them on your own.
Share them with friends.
I wish you good luck.
And as always, I thank you
for visiting the Penguin Prof Channel.
Please comment, rate and subscribe.
Thanks so much.