A Subway Map of Human Anatomy

 

A Subway Map of Human Anatomy infographic is a good example of bridging the gap between scientific information and a recognizable design. Johnathon Simmons M.D. uses a well-known visualization of the London Underground Subway system and uses that design style with the human body to explain the relationships between all of the systems within us. A Hires version is available on Visual Capitalist to view the intricate details. 

We all have bodies, but how many of us truly know our way around them? Plenty of books explain in detail the functions of and relationships between each and every part of our anatomy, but few of them do it in a way the layman — and especially the layman not yet accustomed to the sight of human viscera laid bare — can readily grasp. We need a visualization of the human body, but what kind of visualization can best represent it with a maximum of clarity and a minimum of misleading distortion?

“Most people might imagine an intricate network of blood vessels or the complex neural circuits of the brain,” writes Visual Capitalist’s Iman Ghosh. “Or we might picture diagrams from the iconic medical textbook, Gray’s Anatomy.” But how about a visualization of the body in the style of a classic piece of information design we’ve all seen at least once, the London Underground map? “Created by Jonathan Simmonds M.D., a resident physician at Tufts Medical Center,” Ghosh writes, “it’s a simple yet beautifully intuitive demonstration of how efficiently our bodies work.”

Just as Harry Beck’s original 1933 London Underground map straightened out and color-coded each of the lines then in operation, Simmonds’ anatomical map traces thirteen different “lines” through the body, each of which represents a different system of the body: the nervous system in yellow, for example, the airway system in black, and the lymphatic system in green. “While dashed lines represent deeper structures, sections with ‘transfers’ show where different organ systems intersect,” Ghosh writes. If you’re wondering where to start, she adds, “there’s a helpful ‘You Are Here’ at the heart.”

Found on: Open Culture

Amaizing people - 3

 

Rope jumper

Olga Korbut loop. Was prohibited by International gymnastic federation as the most dangerous exercise.

Spider-man

How cholera affects the body

The Human Body Has Another Organ: The Mesentery

(Credit: J Calvin Coffey/D Peter O’Leary/Henry Vandyke Carter)

By Nathaniel Scharping

To the 78 organs that make up the human body, we can add one more: the mesentery.

Located in our abdominal cavity, the mesentery is a belt of tissue that holds our intestines in place. While anatomists knew it was there, it was always thought to be composed of several different segments, as opposed to being one single structure. This knocked it out of contention for organ status, as our bodily organs must be continuous, as well as provide some vital function to our anatomy.

A new study from researchers at the University Hospital Limerick reveals that the mesentery is actually one single band of tissue, beginning at the pancreas and continuing down through the small intestine and colon, wrapping around these vital organs to hold them tight and help them maintain their structure. It is made of a folded-over ribbon of peritoneum, a type of tissue usually found lining the abdominal cavity.

“Without it you can’t live,” says J. Calvin Coffey, a Limerick University Hospital researcher and colorectal surgeon. “There are no reported instances of a Homo sapien living without a mesentery.”

It was by peeling away the peritoneum and repeated observations that Coffey built his case for the mesentery. In 2012, Coffey’s team determined the mesentery was indeed a single, connected structure. In this most recent study, published in The Lancet, Coffey’s team outlines evidence collected over four years that affirms the mesentery’s organ status. The mesentery is highly integrated with the intestine, he says, and is located in an area of the human body that has not been fully explored — we still, apparently, contain new frontiers.

And, according to The Independent, the seminal medical textbook Gray’s Anatomy was updated in 2015 to include the new definition of the mesentery. However, Coffey isn’t exactly sure when an organ is officially an organ.

“That’s a fascinating question. I actually don’t know who the final arbiter of that is,” says Coffey.

In apes and other creatures that walk on all fours, he says that the structure of the mesentery, and the organs it supports, is slightly different, which affects the layout of their guts. Understanding how and why our digestive system is arranged the way it is could be crucial to our understanding of diseases like Crohn’s and irritable bowel syndrome.

“There are a lot of disease that we are stalled on, and we need to refresh our approach to these diseases,” Coffey says. “Now that we’ve clarified its structure, we can systematically examine it. We’re at a very exciting place right now.”

The era of mesenteric science has begun.

Your Brain Has a Unique 'Fingerprint' That Can Now Be Mapped

Scientists have figured out how to identify the structural connections within the brain that are unique to every individual person.

As you read this, your brain's neurons are firing away within a pattern of networks that is uniquely yours. This pattern makes up your brain's "fingerprint."

New research has confirmed that the point-by-point connections that make up the mesh-like white matter of your brain are truly unique to each individual person, and are perpetually shaped not only by genetics but also by experience.

"If we compare a brain structure to a complicated circuit, the white matter is the wiring of the circuit," Fang-Cheng (Frank) Yeh, lead author of the study appearing in PLOS Computational Biology, told Seeker. "Everyone's wiring is unique and can actually define who a person is — his or her personality, experience, education."

Before you start imagining brain scanners at ID checkpoints, keep in mind that because our brain fingerprints are constantly shaped by experience, it's unlikely the finding will lead to a new identification tool.

Instead, the hope is by scanning people's brain fingerprints, doctors and researchers will have a new way to diagnose and possibly treat mental illnesses such as depression and bipolar disorder.

It also offers unique insight into how shared experience can directly impact biology — particularly the brain's map of neural connections, otherwise known as our connectomes.

"There are a couple of things we can take away from this," coauthor and Carnegie Mellon University Assistant Professor of Psychology Timothy Verstynen told Seeker in an email. "First, it gives us another measure by which to see and measure neuroplasticity. Second, and more importantly, it alludes to the fact that individuals with similar experiences may start to show more similar structural connectomes."

To confirm everyone's wiring pattern is unique, Yeh, a neurosurgeon at the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University used diffusion MRI to precisely measure connections along all of the white matter pathways in the brain. Diffusion MRIs use the diffusion of water molecules in tissue to generate contrast in images.

After measuring more than 17,000 multiple local connections within the brains of 699 subjects, they were able to read the scans and then determine whether two connections came from the same person or not — with nearly 100 percent accuracy.

Even identical twins featured unique brain fingerprints since a person's white matter is shaped by outside factors as well as genetics. Twins only share 12 percent of the same structural patterns in their brain wiring, the team found.

"An interesting future study would look at the brain fingerprint of twins at a young age and then track how their brain fingerprints became different over time," said Yeh.

Life experience plays such a role in shaping your brain fingerprint, that your white matter's structural patterns change by an average of 13 percent every 100 days, the researchers found.

"We think that experience has a profound and powerful impact on the unique connectivity profile of the structural connections in your head," Verstynen told Seeker.

"What we want to do next is see if we can similarities in the local connectome across people. For example do people who grew up with the same life experiences have similar structural connections? Or do people who have similar cognitive abilities also have similar connectomes?" Verstynen posed. "If we can find this, then it suggests that maybe we can also find other common patterns."

Yeh admits that the process they used to identify and differentiate brain patterns is still in its very early phase. However, once methods are refined and made more efficient, he envisions that an early possible application will be using the technology to help diagnose mental illnesses.

"Diagnosis of mental illness like depression or bipolar disorder is prone to error," he told Seeker. "Hopefully in the future, this brain fingerprint could reveal the process that causes the development of a brain disease. Then the condition will be evident in the brain fingerprint."

20 Things You Didn't Know About ... Your Back

Mahony/Shutterstock

Neanderthals apparently suffered from less lower back pain — and if you’ve got a lot of it, you might have more in common with chimpanzees than your fellow humans.

By Gemma Tarlach

1. Thanks to evolution, your back is a marvel of load-bearing support and flexibility — and kind of a mess. Our species is prone to back pain, for example, because our ancestors’ imperfect transition to upright walking essentially took a spine similar to that of our nearest living relatives, knuckle-walking chimpanzees, and forced it vertical with piecemeal adaptations.

2. A 2015 study found that some people are, well, chimpier than others. Humans prone to certain back problems have vertebrae closer in shape to those of a chimpanzee than those of pain-free humans.

3. Regardless of shape, you might have more (or fewer) of the bones than your neighbor. Not everyone has the standard 33 vertebrae: From top to tail, that’s seven cervical, 12 thoracic, five lumbar, five sacral and four coccygeal.

4. The number of vertebrae in individual Homo sapiens actually varies between 32 and 35, with the biggest range of difference in the pelvic area.

5. The four natural curves in our spines develop at different times. Both the thoracic (midback) and sacral (pelvic), which develop early in embryos, curve outward.

6. The other two curves, which bend inward, become more pronounced at key points in infant development: the cervical curve, when a baby can hold up its head; and the lumbar, when the li’l tyke begins to walk.

7. Every doctor who’s ever examined you puts that ice-cold stethoscope on your triangle of auscultation, a quiet zone in between three major muscles near the base of your shoulder blade, where it’s easier to hear your lungs.

8. Lower back pain, our most common backache, may not have been as big a deal for our Neanderthal cousins. A 2008 study in the European Spine Journal found that the lower spines of two adult Neanderthals showed little of the degeneration associated with a life of heavy physical activity, which we believe they experienced.

9. The secret to Neanderthals’ better back health is apparently a combination of heavier musculature supporting their spines and lumbar kyphosis, a reverse curvature of the lower spine that, in our species, is considered abnormal.

10. The oldest known tattoos, including two on his back, belong to the famous 5,300-year-old Otzi the Iceman, found in the Italian Alps in 1991.

11. Some researchers theorize that Otzi’s “ink” (actually soot) mapped out acupuncture treatments intended to ease a variety of ailments.

12. Most other ancient tattoos, many of which are on the back, appear to be symbolic and represent status or specific achievements, such as the elaborate animals of Siberia’s 2,500-year-old Pazyryk mummies.

13. Bum backs, and remedies for them, have been recorded in the earliest medical documents. An ancient Egyptian scroll known as the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, named after the archaeologist who purchased it in 1862, explains how to diagnose a “pulled vertebra.” Sadly, only partial instructions for treatment are included.

14. The Egyptian scroll’s author may have been concerned with fixing pulled vertebra, but by 2700 B.C., the Chinese were practicing intentional spinal manipulation.

15. Back-cracking was widespread throughout the ancient world — for better or worse. Hippocrates, for example, advocated strapping someone with an abnormally curved spine to a ladder, and then dropping the ladder (and patient) from a height. Don’t try this at home, kids.

16. The modern practice of chiropractic began when Daniel David Palmer, a self-styled “magnetic healer,” claimed to have restored the hearing of a deaf man by popping one of his vertebra back into place in 1895.

17. Palmer believed that a back out of whack — “subluxation,” or vertebral misalignment — causes 95 percent of diseases.

18. A 2012 white paper by the Institute for Science in Medicine, however, declared, “There is no scientific evidence that chiropractic subluxations exist or that their purported ‘detection’ or ‘correction’ confers any health benefit.” Ouch.

19. It’s commonly believed the saying “watch your back” derives from military tactics, but the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t, ahem, back up this claim: It notes “watch your back” appears first in the 1949 Western novel Milk River Range by Lee Floren.

20. Disagree? Hey, we’re just telling you what’s in the OED so, you know, get off our backs (a saying with roots in the 17th century).

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Sweat

Eunika Sopotnicka / Shutterstock

Your health, feelings and diet can change your sweat composition — but your unique sweat fingerprint is distinctly yours.

By Jessica Festa

1. Composed of about 99 percent water, sweat evaporates on the skin’s surface, cooling the body and keeping it from overheating.

2. Sweat secretions help you in other ways, too. They include dermcidin, an antibiotic peptide that appears to regulate bacteria growth on the skin and may fight infection.

3. Not all humans sweat equally. Men sweat up to twice as much as women, and both sexes sweat less with age.

4. The sensation of touch can trigger a “sweat reflex” on the opposite side of the body from the spot that is touched. 5 Sweat can trigger other responses: People with atopic dermatitis, a skin condition, can experience an immediate and serious allergic reaction to a fungal protein called MGL_1304 that’s found in sweat.

6. Aside from humans, horses are one of the few mammals that thermoregulate by sweating. Horse sweat is high in latherin, a protein that helps the water in sweat travel from the skin, past the animals’ heavy waterproof pelt and to the air, where it can evaporate and keep them cool.

7. Hippos actually produce a red-colored sweat, which acts as an antibiotic and sunscreen.

8. If you’re sweating red and you’re not a hippo, you might have a rare condition called hematohidrosis. Blood vessels rupture and run into sweat glands in affected individuals, causing them to actually sweat blood.

9. Another rare condition, chromhidrosis, causes humans to sweat orange, blue or other colors. While the condition can sometimes be traced to ingesting certain drugs, the cause often remains a mystery in otherwise healthy people.

10. It’s no mystery, however, why the sweat of healthy people often smells different from that of sick individuals. The body emits volatile organic compounds based on metabolic condition, which can change when disease or infection is present.

11. Cystic fibrosis can be detected with a sweat test. Sodium and chloride are much more concentrated in the sweat of individuals with the condition.

12. Emotions can trigger changes in the composition of your sweat. In an Austrian study, participants wore pads that collected their sweat while watching scary films first, and then neutral films the next day. A second group of volunteers smelled the pads and was able to distinguish which pads were worn during the scary movie.

13. In a similar experiment, female participants judged the sweat of non-meat-eating men to be more attractive than that of meat eaters.

14. Regardless of your health, feelings or diet, your sweat is distinctly yours. While other components of sweat may fluctuate, an individual’s sweat “fingerprint,” a unique blend of 373 volatile compounds, remains consistent over time.

15. Each of us has a unique sweat fingerprint, but the two types of sweat glands, apocrine and eccrine, are universal to humans. We have eccrine glands over most of our bodies, but apocrine glands only in our armpits and genital region.

16. Our bodies produce very little apocrine perspiration, but it’s responsible for most of the odor because it’s high in water and waste products that promote the growth of smelly bacteria.

17. Clear, fluid eccrine sweat, produced in much larger quantities, spreads the apocrine over a larger surface area — and the stench along with it.

18. What to do with all that sweat? UNICEF and Swedish engineer Andreas Hammar teamed up in 2013 to draw attention to millions of people without clean drinking water by creating the Sweat Machine, which pulled sweat from clothing and turned it into potable water through a process of spinning, heating and filtering.

19. The Sweat Machine was more awareness-raising stunt than solution. A sweaty T-shirt yielded just 2 teaspoons of purified water, and organizers admitted there were no plans to mass-produce the gizmo.

20. Maybe the Sweat Machine would have been more productive if they’d used socks instead. A pair of human feet has 250,000 sweat glands, emitting a half pint of liquid every day.

When Google Maps meets the human body, here's what happens

Melding technology designed to examine silicon wafers with Google Maps algorithms has yielded a remarkable way to look at our own bodies.

by Michael Franco

The "Earth" view in Google Maps lets us zoom from the heights of our atmosphere to the tops of our homes, putting our place in the world in dramatic perspective. New technology helps the zoom factor continue -- straight down into our bodies.

At the just-concluded Orthopedic Research Society meeting in Las Vegas, Melissa Knothe Tate from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia presented a new kind of imaging technique that will let scientists zoom in to the body with the same fluidity as Google Maps lets us zoom into our neighborhoods.

To create the technique, the biomedical engineer and a group of researchers from other universities tapped technology originally invented by German company Zeiss to scan the surface of silcon wafers such as those used in microelectronics. The imaging technology can take millions of microscopic images of an area of the body -- and offers advantages over MRIs.

"MRI is the equivalent of looking at the map of the United States or a map of Europe, where you see the individual country borders," Knothe Tate told Quartz. With her technique, "you see the individual inhabitants within the cities and the countries."

But once those images -- which can range from "centimeters-long human joints to nanometer-sized molecules inside a single cell inhabiting the tissue," according to The Sydney Morning Herald -- are assembled, they comprise an enormous set of data that can be hard to wield. So the researchers turned to the same algorithms used by Google Maps to stitch the images together into one zoomable picture.

"For the first time we have the ability to go from the whole body down to how the cells are getting their nutrition and how this is all connected," Knothe Tate said in a statement. "This could open the door to as yet unknown new therapies and preventions."

Knothe Tate, who focuses on regenerative medicine, told Quartz that the new technology can let her go from seeing cracks in the bone to zooming in deeper to observe weak blood vessel connections. Such an analysis of data used to take up to 25 years, but can now be done in weeks, says the UNSW report. With this new understanding, Knothe Tate hopes to develop preventive and recuperative treatments for individuals suffering from bone and joint ailments.