Understanding Anatomical Position and Body Planes Explained

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 learned

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're 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 aren't 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're looking at the patient in other words if you're 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 an 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 three main body planes and then a couple minor ones we're going to

talk about at the end a simple trick to remember the three main body planes is to take the word section since we're

talking about body planes in sections and abbreviated 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 two 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 mid sagittal 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's also known as the median plane mid median and middle i'll start with the letter m and this can help you

remember the mid-sagittal plane runs right down the middle or midline of the body

the pictures on your screen are examples of a mid-sagittal plane a parasagital plane is any of the

sagittal planes off-center and it divides the body into unequal right and left portions

parasagital 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 parasagital 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 mid-sagittal

plane and then spin the right and left sections that we just cut you can see we're 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's a suture called the sagittal

suture it gets its name because the sagittal suture runs from front to back in the sagittal plane it's 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 three 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's a suture called the coronal suture it gets its name because the

coronal suture runs from right to left in the coronal plane it's 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 three major planes of the body

the transverse plane is also called the axial plane or horizontal plane which makes sense because it's 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'll 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're not horizontal or vertical as that would mean that

they're 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

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thanks for watching and hope you check out future videos