Anatomy and Physiology For Dummies

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If you’ve taken geometry, you know that a plane is a flat surface and that a straight line can run between two points on that flat surface. Geometric planes can be positioned at any angle. In anatomy, usually three planes separate the body into sections. Figure 1-2 shows you what each plane looks like. The reason for separating the body with imaginary lines — or by making actual cuts referred to as sections — is so that you know which half or portion of the body or organ is being discussed. The anatomical planes are as follows: Class Mammalia: Tetrapods with hair. Other classes of the vertebrata are Pisces (fish), Amphibia (frogs), Aves (birds), and Reptilia (scaly things). tip.eps Every time you come across an anatomical or physiological term that’s new to you, pull it apart to see whether any of its fragments are familiar. Using this knowledge, go as far as you can in guessing the meaning of the whole term. After studying Table 1-1 and the other vocabulary lists in this chapter, you should be able to make some pretty good guesses. Looking at the Body from the Proper Perspective This workbook isn’t a substitute for a textbook, and it is certainly not meant to replace going to an actual anatomy and physiology class.

The fourth shell (which can be found in elements such as potassium, calcium, and iron) holds up to 18 electrons. Higher shells also exist. The whole enchilada. The real you. As we study organ systems, organs, tissues, and cells, we’re always looking from the organism level. Chapter 2 What Your Body Does All Day In This Chapter This is a simple idea that far too few students practice regularly. Don’t stop at underlining and highlighting important material in your textbooks and study guides: Write it down. Or type it up. Whatever you do, don’t just regurgitate it exactly as presented in the material you’re studying. The test is done and the grades are in. So there was a really tough question or two on the test and you blew it big-time? It’s hardly a missed opportunity — this is where rolling with the punches really pays off.

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To keep anions and cations straight, think like a compulsive dieter: Gaining is negative, and losing is positive. The following list of common anatomical descriptive terms that appear throughout this and every other anatomy book may come in handy: The two systems that control body activities are the endocrine system and the nervous system. The endocrine system exerts its control by means of chemical messengers called hormones. Hormones are produced by a variety of endocrine glands, which release the hormones directly into the blood stream.

If you remove all the internal organs, the body is empty except for the bones and tissues that form the space where the organs were. Just as a dental cavity is a hole in a tooth, the body’s cavities are holes where organs are held (see Figure 1-3). The two main cavities are the dorsal cavity and the ventral cavity. The digestive system consists of a series of connected organs that work together to break down, or digest, food into small molecules that are absorbed into the circulatory system, which then carries them to the body’s tissues. The major structures of the digestive system are the mouth, tongue, esophagus, stomach, intestines, rectum, and anus. The liver, gallbladder, and pancreas also are part of the system. Each of these major groups, called a kingdom, has its own characteristic anatomy and physiology. It’s evident at a glance to everyone at the beach that a starfish and a human are both animals, while the alga in the tide pool and the cedar tree on the shoreline are both plants. Obvious details of anatomy (the presence or absence of bright green tissue) and physiology (the presence or absence of locomotion) tell that story. The different forms within each kingdom have obvious differences as well: The cedar must stand on the shore but the alga would die there. The starfish can move from one place to another within a limited range, while humans can (theoretically) go anywhere on the planet and, with the appropriate accoutrements of culture (a human adaptation), survive there for at least a while. (That is, assuming the cedar and the alga keep on photosynthesizing.) Scientists use these differences to classify organisms into smaller and smaller groups within the kingdom, until each organism is classified into its own specie-al group. The longer answer to the question of why scientists don’t say what they mean starts with a little chat about jargon. Contrary to the belief of some, jargon is a good thing. Jargon is a set of words and phrases that people who know a lot about a particular subject use to talk together. There’s jargon in every field (scientific or not), every workplace, every town, even every home. Families and close friends almost always use jargon in conversations with one another. Plumbers use jargon to communicate about plumbing. Anatomists and physiologists use jargon and technical terminology, much of which is shared with medicine and other fields of biology, especially human biology.

Darwin made scientific history in his own way, of course, but it was a German physicist named Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen who’s remembered as the father of medical imaging. In 1895, Roentgen recorded the first image of the internal parts of a living human: an X-ray image of his wife’s hand. By 1900, X-rays were in widespread use for the early detection of tuberculosis, at that time a common cause of death. X-rays are beams of radiation emitted from a machine toward the patient’s body, and X-ray images show details only of hard tissues, like bone, that reflect the radiation. In this way, they’re similar to photographs. Refinements and enhancements of X-ray techniques were developed all through the 20th century, with extensive use and major advances during World War II. The X-ray is still a widely used method for medical diagnosis screening for signs of disease, usually tumors. The digestion of food is both a mechanical and a chemical process. Food enters through the mouth, where chewing and saliva start to break it up and make it easier to swallow. Next, the food travels down through the esophagus to the stomach. Contractions of the stomach’s muscular wall continue to break down the food mechanically, and chemical digestion continues when acid and enzymes are secreted into the stomach cavity.

Not feeling terribly clever at the moment you need a useful mnemonic? Surf on over to MedicalMnemonics, which touts itself as the world’s database of these useful tools. Discover your learning style Anatomy and physiology narrow the science of biology by looking at the specifics of one species, Homo sapiens. There are 98 naturally occurring elements in nature and 20 (at last count) artificially created elements for a total of 118 known elements. However, additional spaces have yet to be filled in on the periodic chart of elements, which organizes all the elements by name, symbol, atomic weight, and atomic number. The key elements of interest to students of anatomy and physiology areHuman anatomists and physiologists have divided the human body into organ systems, groups of organs that work together to meet a major physiological need. For example, the digestive system is one of the organ systems responsible for obtaining energy from the environment. Other organ systems include the musculoskeletal system, the integument, the nervous system, and on down the list. The chapter structure of this book is based on the definition of organ systems. Level V: The organism level

We want to make sure that you know where we’re coming from when we use certain terms. If you don’t look at the body from the correct perspective, you’ll have your right and left confused. This section shows you the anatomical position, planes, regions, and cavities, as well as the main membranes that line the body and divide it into major sections. Getting in position If you’re a visual learner, you may get more out of anatomy and physiology by seeing the real thing in the flesh. If you’re an aural learner, you may learn best in the classroom as the teacher lectures. If you’re a reading and writing kind of learner, you’ll get the most out of our first tip to write stuff down. And if you’re a kinesthetic learner, there’s nothing like touching or holding to commit something to memory. Get a grip on Greek and Latin This chapter is about your life as an organism. As Chapter 1 explains, organism is the fifth of five levels of organization in living things. Although the word organism has many possible definitions, for the purposes of this chapter, an organism is a living unit that metabolizes and maintains its own existence . The organs that belong to one system can have functions integral to another system. In fact, most organs contribute to more than one system. The blood vessels are an excellent example: They serve as a transportation network, delivering nutrients produced by the digestive system to the skeletal muscles to provide energy for locomotion and to the uterus to support the developing fetus. They remove the byproducts of the energy consumed in locomotion and by the fetus in development and carry them to the organs of the urinary system for excretion. Level IV: The organ system level Acid: A substance that becomes ionized when placed in solution, producing positively charged hydrogen ions, H +. An acid is considered a proton donor. (Remember, atoms always have the same number of electrons as protons. Ions are produced when an atom gains or loses electrons.) Stronger acids separate into larger numbers of H + ions in solution.Variety Sapiens: Some species get a varietal name, usually indicating a difference that’s obvious but not necessarily important from an evolutionary point of view. The human species has one other variety, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, which has been extinct for tens of thousands of years. All humans living since then are of one species variety, Homo sapiens sapiens. In the evolutionary classification of humans, there’s no biologically valid category below species variety. A Little Chat about Jargon When you’re answering practice questions, pay special attention to the ones you get wrong. Write reflections about why you answered incorrectly and what you need to remember about the right answer. Gain better knowledge through mnemonics The ventral cavity is much larger and contains all the organs not contained in the dorsal cavity. The ventral cavity is divided by the diaphragm into smaller cavities: the thoracic cavity, which contains the heart and lungs, and the abdomino pelvic cavity, which contains the organs of the abdomen and the pelvis. The abdominal organs are the stomach, liver, gallbladder, spleen, and most of the intestines. The pelvic cavity contains the reproductive organs, the bladder, the rectum, and the lower portion of the intestines.