 Hey everybody Dr. O here in this video we're going to cover the anatomical position and directional terminology. So first what is the anatomical position? Unless you're told otherwise you have to assume your patient is in the anatomical position when we're describing locations of different structures. So the anatomical position is someone standing up standing erect with their feet forward the palms of their hands forward and their eyes forward just like this lady is. So that's the anatomical position. If she was resting her arms at her side like you normally would that would be called a functional position that's going to be used a little bit more in kinesiology. So that's the anatomical position. Before we jump into the individual terms I just want to kind of explain the rules. Number one you see the left and the right there above her head. So it's always the patients left and the patients right that can be confusing when you're looking at an image the right side of the page is going to be the left side of their body so always keep that in mind it's the patients left patients right whether you're talking about directional terms where blood vessels are etc. So that's rule number one rule number two directional terms don't mean anything in isolation. So directional term is always something in relation to something else. So if I were to say that my elbow is inferior that doesn't tell me anything because inferior to what my elbow is inferior to my shoulder most of the time but it's superior to my wrist. So remember directional terms are going to tie two locations together. Alright so those are the rules let's go ahead and jump in and cover some of the terminology here then. Let's go ahead and start with the front and the back. So there are two ways to describe that. We have anterior versus posterior and we have ventral versus dorsal. So anterior means towards the front and posterior means towards the back pretty straightforward. But in a human in a bipedal animal like a human ventral and dorsal mean the same thing because ventral actually means towards the belly and our belly is on our front and dorsal means towards the back think about like a dorsal fin on a shark or a dolphin. So dorsal is going to mean towards the back. So ventral and anterior mean the same thing dorsal and posterior mean the same thing but that's only in humans. Now if you were taking a class where you're learning about four-legged animals their belly would be towards the bottom right so that wouldn't wouldn't be correct. But ventral and anterior towards the front dorsal and posterior towards the back. Now let's go up and down. So first we have superior which means towards the top and inferior which means towards the bottom. So those words work just fine. But you're going to see on here as well cranial versus caudal. So cranial means towards the skull which is obviously on the top and caudal means towards the tail. So you'll actually see the term caudal again learning about the nervous system. The cauda equina or horses tail is the long nerves that dangle below the spinal cord. So caudal means towards the tail. I do want to add one more term here. Another term that means towards the top would be cephalic. So cephalic means towards the head which is obviously on the top. So cranial, cephalic and superior all mean towards the top and caudal and inferior mean towards the bottom. All right so that's cranial versus caudal and then we have our front and back. Next let's do medial and lateral. So medial means towards the middle, towards the midline. Lateral means away from the midline. So those are pretty straightforward. And then next on here we have proximal versus distal. This is a very important one because this is the best term, the first term you should use any time you're describing a limb because proximal means towards the trunk, closest to the trunk and distal means further away from the trunk. The reason those are such important terms is because they're always correct. If I were to say that the elbow is distal to the shoulder that's always right. But if I were to say the elbow is inferior to the shoulder it's not always right. Standing in this position is true but if I raise my hand over my head now my elbow is superior to the shoulder. So whenever you're describing limbs think proximal and distal first. All right so those are most of the critically important directional terms. I have a couple more terms I want to add here though and that would be superficial versus deep. So superficial means towards the surface, distal means further away from the surface. So pretty straightforward. If you're thinking about structures like your skin would be very superficial compared to your colon would be deeper. So the more layers you have to travel through to get to something the deeper it is. And then two more really important terms and that would be prone versus supine. So if you take this person that's standing up and you lay them down if they're laying on their back they're supine. If they're laying on their belly their stomach they're prone. So what I think about just remember when you're supine you're on your spine. That's the simplest way to remember it. You're laying on your back you're supine. And then for me when I think of prone I always think about the cool little green army men I played with when I was a kid and when they were prone they were crawling on their bellies. But whether that works for you I can't say. Alright so that is the anatomical position and those are your key directional terms. I hope this video was super helpful. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.