teaching neuroanatomical terminology in english as part of the language of medicine

Abstract

neuroanatomy is the study of the structural organization of the nervous system. its terminology is closely related to the origin and development of medical terminology. Understanding linguistic phenomena such as etymology, synonyms, antonyms, paronyms, acronyms etc. helps the students in achieving a higher medical competence. The specific terms could be distributed into several categories related to: 1. geometric objects (pyramid, uncus, fornix); 2. colours (red nucleus, white matter, gray matter); 3. skull structures (lacrimal nerve – lacrimal bone, mandibular nerve – mandible); 4. author name (Schwann cells, Broca area, Parkinson disease). Some terms in the english terminology preserve their original latin form (substantia nigra, corpus callosum) but others are modified (red nucleus, latin - nucleus ruber). This model of investigation may be applied to other medical disciplines.

Keywords

• neuroanatomical terminology
• etymology
• Synonyms
• antonyms
• Paronyms
• eponyms