Directional Terms: Body Sides - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems
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1
concept
Medial and Lateral
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3m
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When we're talking about directional terms for the sides of the body, the first thing that you always want to remember is that bodies have bilateral symmetry, right. We've talked about this before. You have a right side of the body, you have the left side of the body and those two sides are largely mirror images of each other. So for that reason, I'm gonna start by just drawing a midline down this body. All right. So there we go. So that's separating this anatomical modules, right and left side. Next thing we always want to remember that right and left side is the bodies right and left, not your right and left. And when you're looking at the body, right, this is her right, this is her left, that right and left is probably going to be opposite your right and left depending on your perspective. OK. When talking about this axis, we're gonna have different words that mean how close you are towards that midline. And those two words are gonna be medial and lateral, medial is just going to mean towards or closer to the midline and lateral is going to be away from or farther from the midline. So we can give some quick examples of that right. The hip here is going to be lateral to the navel or the belly button. The navel or belly button is going to be medial to the hip. We can say that the ear is lateral to the eye. We can say that the eye is medial to the ear. Remember all things are relative, it's always a comparison between two things. So while the ear, I'm sorry, while the eye was medial to the ear, the eye is lateral to the nose and the nose is medial to the eye. Ok. On this left and right spectrum, we can also talk about things being between two things and that between two things is going to be intermediate intermediate between medial and lateral. Now, sometimes you may be tempted to say it's intermediate, unlike the inferior, superior axis, you can't do that. Intermediate only refers to the medial lateral axis. All right. So an example, we have the eye is intermediate to the ear and the nose, your collarbone right here is intermediate to your shoulder and your sternum. OK? Now, once we've divided a body in half by a midline, we now have two sides of the body and we may want to say something is on the same side of the body or we may may wanna say something is on the opposite side of the body. We have words for that too. Our words for the same or different sides of the body are gonna be ipsilateral and contralateral, ipsilateral just means on the same side while contralateral means the opposite side. Now, those roots, Ipsa and contra, IPSA means same, contra means opposite. I don't have any way to remember. IPSA. IPSA is a root that's really only used in medical terminology. So I don't really know any other words that use it contra, however, right, you can contradict something. Someone can, something can be contrary, contra means opposite or against. And so I always remember that one. So in trying to keep these straight, I can always remember contra contralateral. And then I use that to remind myself what ipsilateral means. So we can do an example here if we're looking at this uh knee, this is the left knee, the left knee is ipsilateral to the left hand, the left hand and the left knee are ipsilateral. This left knee is contralateral to the right hand, the right hand and the left knee are contralateral. OK? With that, you have enough information to go ahead and try our example below and the practice problems to follow. I'll see you there.
2
example
Directional Terms: Body Sides Example 1
Video duration:
2m
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This example again, asks us to mark up this body using some of the directional terms that we just learned. So let's go ahead and give it a try. First off, it asks for an asterisk lateral to the left of the navel. So go ahead and think about that. All right, the first thing I wanna do is put a left and a right on the body. But I'm also going to remind myself this body is facing me by putting a little smiley face on it. All right, we have the left, we have the right, OK, lateral to the left of the navel. Well, lateral just means to the side. I mean, it's to the left and the navels in the, in the middle. So uh that one's pretty straightforward. So just a little bit to the left of the navel, I'm gonna put an asterisk. All right. Second, we have an o intermediate to the nose and the right ear. All right, intermediate. Think about that for a second, intermediate means between on the left to right axis. So between the the right ear and the nose is going to be right. Yeah. All right. Next we have a plus sign on the hip, contralateral to the right knee. Think about that for a second. All right, we have contralateral. So, contralateral, remember, lateral means side and contra means like against or opposite a against something. So this is gonna be the opposite side. So we have the right knee here. The hip on the contralateral side is gonna be the other side. It's gonna be right here. So I'm gonna put a plus sign actually right close to where I put the asterisk. And then finally, it says an X on the medial side of the left wrist. All right. Think about that for a second. All right. This one might be a little tricky because when you hear medial, you might think the middle of the wrist. But remember we're talking about medials always towards the midline of the body. So we're talking about the left wrist, the medial side of the left wrist is just gonna be the side that's closest to the body. And we're gonna put a big old X right there. All right. So that's where my marks go. There you go.
3
Problem
Problem
Imagine you are a surgeon about to perform a procedure on the liver, which is located on the right side of body just below the ribs. Relative to the navel (belly button) where would you prepare the incision?
A
Medial and ipsilateral to the right.
B
Inferior and medial to the left.
C
Contralateral and superior to the left.
D
Superior and lateral to the right.
4
Problem
Problem
According to anatomical position, what is the most lateral part of the body?
A
Anywhere on the midline
B
The hips or shoulders
C
The thumbs
D
The feet
5
Problem
Problem
The left knee and the left ankle are _______________.
A
Ipsilateral
B
Intermediate
C
Contralateral
D
Medial
6
Problem
Problem
The right hemisphere of the brain processes signals from sensory nerves on the left side of the body. Another way to say this is that sensory neurons are located ________________ to the hemisphere of the brain that processes them.
A
Ipsilateral
B
Medial
C
Contralateral
D
Lateral
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