2/When I look at the skullbase veins, I see an angry Santa yelling at me. His eyebrows are raised, his mouth is open, & he has a mustache w/a big beard hanging down.
Each I look at the skullbase, I look for this Santa—bc each part of him is an important venous structure.
3/So let’s start w/Santa’s eyes. The eyes are actually not a venous structure, but an important landmark—foramen ovale, where the V3 trigeminal nerve exit.
I remember ovale is Santa's eyes bc eyes are OVAL, so his eyes are OVALE
4/Next are Santa’s angry raised eyebrows. These are the sphenoparietal sinuses.
I remember these are the eyebrows bc I call them “seen”-oparietal sinuses & you see w/your eyes.
These have this “eyebrow” shape bc they are following the curve of the greater sphenoid wing
5/Sphenoparietal sinuses meet in the middle at the cavernous sinus—like your eyebrows meet in the middle at your nose.
I remember the cavernous sinus & intracavernous sinuses are Santa’s nose bc you dig in a cavern. And where do all kids like to go digging? Their nose! 🤢
6/Right below Santa’s nose is his mustache & this is the basilar plexus, right below the cavernous sinus.
You can remember this bc mustaches are made of a base & handlebars—and the BASE of Santa’s mustache is the BASilar plexus
7/Extending from Santa’s mustache is his beard. These are the petrosal sinuses (inferior & superior), important in many neurosurgical approaches.
You can remember that the PETROsal sinuses make up sides of the beard bc you use PETROleum to smooth the sides of your beard
8/Finally, Santa’s mouth is the marginal sinus. I remember this bc the word marginal sounds like “Aaaargh”—the sound pirates make from their mouth. I call it the Maaaargh—inal sinus
So hopefully this thread has given you some ELF-confidence when it comes to skullbase anatomy!
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1/Do you get a Broca’s aphasia trying remember the location of Broca's area?
Does trying to remember inferior frontal gyrus anatomy leave you speechless?
Don't be at a loss for words when it comes to Broca's area
Here’s a 🧵to help you remember the anatomy of this key region!
2/Anatomy of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) is best seen on the sagittal images, where it looks like the McDonald’s arches.
So, to find this area on MR, I open the sagittal images & scroll until I see the arches. When it comes to this method of finding the IFG, i’m lovin it.
3/Inferior frontal gyrus also looks like a sideways 3, if you prefer. This 3 is helpful bc the inferior frontal gyrus has 3 parts—called pars
1/Need help reading spine imaging? I’ve got your back!
It’s as easy as ABC!
A thread about an easy mnemonic you can use on every single spine study you see to increase your speed & make sure you never miss a thing!
2/A is for alignment
Look for: (1) Unstable injuries
(2) Malalignment that causes early degenerative change. Abnormal motion causes spinal elements to abnormally move against each other, like grinding teeth wears down teeth—this wears down the spine
3/B is for bones.
On CT, the most important thing to look for w/bones is fractures. You may see focal bony lesions, but you may not
On MR, it is the opposite—you can see marrow lesions easily but you may or may not see edema associated w/fractures if the fracture is subtle
@TheAJNR 2/Vascular cognitive impairment, or its most serious form, vascular dementia, used to be called multi-infarct dementia.
It was thought dementia directly resulted from brain volume loss from infarcts, w/the thought that 50-100cc of infarcted related volume loss caused dementia
@TheAJNR 3/But that’s now outdated. We now know vascular dementia results from diverse pathologies that all share a common vascular origin.
It’s possible to lose little volume from infarct & still result in dementia.
So if infarcts are common—which contribute to vascular dementia?