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It's easy to become confused when trying to describe locations in the body. Terms that make sense
in everyday life, like "beside", "under", and "on top of", are simply too fuzzy when talking about a
three-dimensional human body. For example, consider a phrase like "an inch below the navel". Is the
speaker looking for a point an inch toward the feet, or toward the spine? For clarity, we need points
of reference.
Superior: toward the head, higher up (also called cranial or rostral)Inferior: toward the feet, lower
down (also called caudal, toward the buttocks)Anterior: toward the front (also called
ventral)Posterior: toward the back (also called dorsal)Medial: toward the midlineLateral: away from
the midline, toward the sidesSuperficial: toward the surfaceDeep: away from the surface, more
inside the bodyProximal: of a limb, closer to the body's midline (usually, closer to the shoulder or
hip)Distal: of a limb, further from the body's midline (usually, closer to the fingers or toes)Ipsilateral:
on the same sideContralateral: on the opposite sideDirections of Movement
Flexion, generally speaking, closes a joint: bending the elbow in a bicep curl, or scrunching the body
down in an airline seat in preparation for a crash. Extension, generally speaking, opens a joint:
straightening the knee or arching the neck. Sometimes it's more useful to think of flexion as a
movement in a sagittal plane that takes part of the body forward from anatomical neutral (reaching
the arm forward is flexion of the shoulder), and extension as a sagittal movement that takes part of
the body backward (reaching the arm back is shoulder extension).
Adduction brings part of the body closer to the midline ("adding" it to the middle), while abduction
takes part of the body away from the midline ( as if it has been ruthlessly abducted, by aliens,
probably). These movements are in the frontal plane, moving only sideways, snow-angel-style.
However, the hands and feet have their own midline so spreading the fingers is abduction, even
though the ring and pinky are moving toward the whole body's midline.
Lateral flexion is sidebending of the spine a quizzical tilt of the head, still in the frontal plane.
Rotation is a transverse twist of the spine, shoulder, hip, or other joint. It's not to be confused with
circumduction, in which a joint smoothly moves through flexion, abuduction, extension and
adduction in a circular motion.
There are also more specific terms of movement for different structures - pronation, supination,
inversion, eversion, nutation, and counternutation, to name a few. These are outside the scope of
this article.
Building Confidence with Anatomical Language
Anatomical terms may seem unnecessarily complex and formal, but they make anatomy study much
easier to understand. Learning terminology is a great place to start thinking about anatomy.