Welcome back to the channel where medical and science topics are made easy.
Today we’re going to talk about the anatomical position, along with body planes and sections.
You’re going to learn several tricks that will help you remember the different
planes and sections of the body, so make sure to watch until the end.
You’ll also want to hit that subscribe button because the next video is on anatomy
directional terms which will take what we learn today and show you how it’s used.
Finally, make sure to turn on the captions down below and read along.
This will help you remember everything.
In order to understand the different body planes
we need to learn what the standard anatomical position is.
The standard anatomical position refers to the body orientation used to describe things like
anatomical planes or sections which we are going to talk about in this video
as well as anatomical directional terms which we’ll talk about in the next video.
It basically provides a universal, consistent way of discussing anatomy
and it creates clear reference points when describing anatomical
positions or using anatomical terms.
We can use the picture of the man to illustrate the standard anatomical position.
The correct position is standing upright,
with the head and eyes directed straight ahead.
The upper limbs are hanging down at the sides,
and slightly away from the trunk so the hands are not touching the sides.
The palms are facing forward,
and the thumbs are pointing away from the body.
The lower limbs are together,
and the feet are flat on the ground facing forward.
When someone is in the anatomical position, right and left refer to the patient’s right and left side
and not as if you were looking at the patient.
In other words, if you were looking at the patient their right side will be your left side
and their left side will be your right side as indicated by the labels “R” and “L” on the screen.
Now that we have a good understanding of the anatomical position,
let’s talk about the different planes of the body.
The terms body planes and sections are often used interchangeably
but they actually have different definitions, so let’s take a look at them.
First, what is a body plane?
Body planes are imaginary lines drawn through an upright body that's in anatomical position.
The major planes or imaginary lines can run vertically or horizontally.
And they divide the body into sections or portions.
For example, the planes might divide the body into right and left sections,
upper and lower sections, or front and back sections depending on the direction of the cut.
The body planes provide different views or sections of the body,
which then allows us to describe the location or direction of anatomical structures or features.
Now that we know what body planes are, how about body sections?
Well, we hinted to it earlier.
Sections are the portions of the body created by the cut from the plane.
So again that could be right and left sections, upper and lower sections,
or front and back sections depending on the slice of the plane.
The simple way to think about the terms is the plane is the
imaginary line that cuts the body into sections,
and this allows us to look at different views of the body depending on the direction of the cut.
Let's go through the major body planes and take a look at some example sections
and all of this will begin to make sense.
There are 3 main body planes and then a couple minor ones we’re going to talk about at the end.
A simple trick to remember the 3 main body planes is to
take the word section, since we’re talking about body planes and sections, and abbreviate it "SCT".
This will help you remember sagittal, coronal, and transverse.
The sagittal plane is the green cut labeled “S” on the image, the coronal plane is the
blue cut labeled “C”, and the transverse plane is the yellow cut labeled “T”.
If we use the abbreviation SCT, you can also remember the first 2 are vertical planes which
are sagittal and coronal, and the last one is a horizontal plane which is the transverse.
We’re now going to talk about each plane starting with the sagittal plane.
As we mentioned earlier,
the sagittal plane is one of the vertical planes.
It's an imaginary line that runs from top to bottom and front to back.
It divides the body into a right section and a left section.
The midsagittal plane is the specific sagittal plane that runs through exactly
the midline of the body and it divides the body into equal right and left portions.
It is also known as the median plane.
Mid, median, and middle all start with the letter "M"
and this can help you remember the midsagittal plane runs right down the middle or midline of the body.
The pictures on your screen are examples of a midsagittal plane.
A parasagittal plane is any of the sagittal planes off-center
and it divides the body into unequal right and left portions.
Parasagittal planes run parallel or alongside the midsagittal plane
but are not in the midline as we can see in the new picture.
Remember in our medical prefix video we said that the prefix “para”
means alongside, beside, or nearby.
So it makes sense that the parasagittal plane
is a sagittal plane that runs alongside the midsagittal plane.
An easy way to remember which plane is the sagittal plane is to think of
sagittal and side view. They both start with the letter “S”.
And when you make a cut through the sagittal plane, you are looking at a side view of the body.
Let’s take a look at some examples to make sure we understand this.
If we take the picture of the man
and make a cut through the midsagittal plane,
and then spin the right and left sections that we just cut,
you can see we are looking at a side view of the body.
In other words, these are examples of sagittal sections that were cut through the sagittal plane.
You might also remember from the video on cranial bones and sutures
that there is a suture called the sagittal suture.
It gets its name because the sagittal suture runs from front to back in the sagittal plane.
It is where the right and left parietal bones of the skull meet.
So this could help you remember the sagittal plane as well.
Moving on to the coronal plane,
this is the “C” in our abbreviation SCT which helps us remember the 3 major planes of the body.
The coronal plane is also called the frontal plane.
And as we mentioned earlier, it’s also a vertical line.
The imaginary line runs from top to bottom and right to left.
It divides the body into a front section and a back section.
The easy way to remember the frontal plane is to again use the name. The frontal plane
will give you a front view of the body as it divides the body into front and back portions.
And just to review, remember the sagittal plane will give you a side view of the body
and they both start with the letter “S”.
You might also remember from the video on cranial bones and sutures
that there is a suture called the coronal suture.
It gets its name because the coronal suture runs from right to left in the coronal plane.
It is where the frontal and parietal bones of the skull meet.
And this could help you remember the coronal plane as well.
Finally we have the transverse plane, which is the “T” in our abbreviation
SCT to help us remember the 3 major planes of the body.
The transverse plane is also called the axial plane or horizontal plane
which makes sense because it is a horizontal line.
You can remember the “X” in axial to help you remember the transverse
plane runs along the “X” axis which is the horizontal axis.
The transverse plane runs from right to left and front to back.
And it divides the body into a top section and a bottom section.
The easy way to remember the transverse plane is to again use the name. The transverse plane
will give you a top view of the body as it divides the body into upper and lower portions.
And just to review the frontal plane will give you a front view of the body.
And the sagittal plane will give you a side view of the body.
Here are a couple more tricks to remember the transverse plane.
If you divide the body into a top and bottom section using a transverse plane,
you will be left with an upper body shaped like a “T”
and a lower body shaped like an upside down “V”
and the T and V can help you remember transverse.
We also learned in our medical prefix video that the prefix “trans” means across.
And finally, we said the transverse plane is also called the horizontal plane.
You can think of the horizon for horizontal plane
and this will help you remember that it goes across horizontally.
There are a couple other planes you might hear about.
The first term is a longitudinal plane.
A longitudinal plane is any plane that is perpendicular to the transverse plane.
We can see in our diagram that the sagittal and coronal planes
run perpendicular to the transverse plane.
Therefore, both the coronal and sagittal planes are examples of longitudinal planes.
A simple trick to remember longitudinal planes is to think of the globe’s
longitudinal lines that run up and down and this will help you remember
the longitudinal planes run vertically or perpendicular to the transverse plane.
Finally, you might also hear of planes that are oblique.
An oblique plane is any plane that is not horizontal or vertical.
In other words, an oblique plane is any plane that is not in any of the sagittal,
coronal, or transverse planes.
They can run at any angle through the body as long as they are not horizontal or vertical
as that would mean that they are one of the other major planes.
You can think of your oblique muscles that travel at an angle.
Or you can think of oblique and odd, which both start with the letter “O”
and this can help you remember oblique planes are odd and travel at strange angles.
Hopefully this helped you better understand the anatomical position
along with body planes and sections.
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