WILTIMS #50: Alas, poor Yorick!

My study-skull and my roommate with his

A new day a new anatomy block! Once again, mere hours after finishing our exam on the previous unmanageable load of material, we are buried in even more. This block is on the head and neck and to aid us in studying the complex 3D structure of the skull, we have each been given an actual human skull to share with a partner. Since there's an odd number of people in our lab section (and I'm masterfully skilled at Rock-Paper-Scissors), I get my own! He keeps me company on my desk and listens to my soliloquies. 

TIL: Because the bones of the skull of a newborn have yet to fuse, there are soft spaces between them. The larger spaces, such as at the junctures of more than two bones, are called fontanelles. Fontainelle translates to "small fountain or spring" in old French, and these soft spots were given this name because in just-born babies you can actually see the blood pulse and gurgle within the meninges.

The mastoid process of the temporal bone (the big bony lump behind and below your ear) is not present in newborns; it develops due to the sternocleidomastoid muscle pulling on it as you grow.

The mental nerve innervates the skin on the jawbone on either side of the chin. It was named this because of how people massage their chin while thinking, and originally, it was thought that this manual stimulation could somehow pass through the nerve and affect the brain.

The sella turcica of the sphenoid bone

One of the features of the sphenoid bone is called the "sella turcica" or "Turkish saddle" which it apparently resembles because it has 4 horns (see animation on the left).

And finally, my favorite cocktail trivia piece from today: do you know where the temple on the side of the head gets its name? There are quite a few well-reasoned urban myths regarding prayer and whatnot, but these are totally off-base. As a clue, the temple shares it's name with the temporal bone over which it located.

Do you have your guess?

Both features are named for the passage of time, specifically because the hair around the temple is usually the first to turn gray as we age.