Talk:Human anatomical terms

Terms
This article seems to cover material in Anatomical terms of location and Anatomical terms of motion, but in my opinion, this article is better written and more scholarly. But it needs wikification. I think either those two articles need to be merged into this one, or else the material in this article needs to be split and merged into those two. Sarah crane 22:31, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Anatomical terms of location = mess
The 'Anatomical terms of location' seems to be a mess of human/animal terms without structure. Until that is fixed properly I suggest this article stays! No merge.. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Electron9 (talk • contribs) 23:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC).

No merge
It might add to the confusion to merge. If the pages are complete with diagrames they should make good pages separately. Snowman 14:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Requesting images
A diagram for the anatomical directions would be of major use to the reader.--Snoopydawg (talk) 08:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Nomenclature
Can basilic also mean towards the feet, alongside inferior and caudal, or is this a dead term? --Osteomyoamare (talk) 04:01, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Adduction / Abduction
Adduction says that it is movement toward the sagittal plane - and that seems to fit with the jumping jacks example mentioned here.

Fanning fingers/toes doesn't quite seem to fit that definition - but even assuming that is indeed 'close enough' to the correct definition I still have some problems with the definition.

It appears that some muscles are grouped as ad/abductors.

But bringing your hands above your head palms together/palms appart would use different muscles and from the horizontal upward would be bringing the limb closer to the sagittal plane - while bringing them up to the horizontal position would be moving the limbs further from the sagital position. So that gives 4 possible (above/below horizontal, palms up/down) combinations - moving toward or from the sagittal plane

Similarly with the hips some gymnasts can bring their legs above horizontal (and almost kick themselves in the ear) so what would seem to be abductors (bringing the leg away from the downward position) would indeed be abduction until the horizontal but would then be adduction above the horizontal. Which would mean muscles grouped as 'ad/ab ductor' muscles would not be totally clear.

What am I missing - can someone clarify those bits of article ? EdwardLane (talk) 15:35, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Further question: regarding this statement "Pronation and supination occur at the elbow to rotate the wrist. Pronation is the turning of the palm from the anatomical position to face backward. Turning the palm forward is supination."

Can someone confirm if (as I suspect) pronation/supination of the hand/wrist is described above assuming the hand is 'down' rather than 'up' ? EdwardLane (talk) 15:43, 30 January 2012 (UTC)


 * With regards to adduction/abduction and what various muscles are "classified" as, the key is that the classifications aren't mean to be definitive and all-encompasing, but rather a description of what the muscle is most often used for, especially with reference to the standard "anatomical position". Thus, while your deltoid brings your arms away from the body (abduction) while the arms are lower than the shoulders and bring them closer to midline (adduction) when above the shoulders, it's generally called an abductor because of the action performed on someone in the standard "anatomical position".  Those who work in this field know that the true function of a muscle can vary based on joint positions and even regional activation of particular parts.  But the categories are used as a sort of a rough guide.


 * As for fingers, it's just re-defining the axis - instead of being movement towards/away from the saggital plane, it's movement towards/away from a plane passing through the middle finger in its resting position. Thus, spreading the fingers apart is abduction, bringing them together is adduction.  This also works well with the hand's interossei muscles (dorsal and palmar).  Because the middle finger's resting state is the midline, the middle finger can only be abducted, thus there are no palmar interossei muscles (adductors) attaching to the middle finger, but there are dorsal_interossei_of_the_hand on both sides of it (to abduct to each side). (The trick to remembering these is: People come together under the PALM tree and leave by the Door).


 * As for pronation/supination, there's two ways I remember it. First, is that the action is called by the name of the position it ends in - thus, supination is the action that ends in your hand being in a supinated position.  For pronated/suppinated, I find it easier to remember by bending the elbow 90 degrees - when your hand is supinated, you can carry a bowl of soup.  Cheesy, but it's how I always remember it. HCA (talk) 22:38, 30 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks - sounds like some of this should go into the relevant articles EdwardLane (talk) 11:58, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Rewrite
This article is undergoing a substantial rewrite at []. It will be replaced and made to redirect to Anatomical terminology. Please see discussion on the sandbox page. CFCF (talk) 13:12, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Reqdiagram
I removed the reqdiagram tag as the page it refers to is no longer valid. Egmason (talk) 10:13, 26 October 2014 (UTC)