Acland’s Video Atlas of Human Anatomy: Review

Features, pros and cons

Fresh and unembalmed cadavers

You’re probably tired about hearing this aspect again, but it is a huge deal when it comes to anatomy learning resources that use cadavers and dissections as learning tools. This includes the anatomy practical classes in health science courses. In almost all cases, the bodies are drowned in formaldehyde in order to preserve them for a long period of time. Unfortunately, this process is tremendously inadequate because the end result is a learning tool that smells and feels like rubber during dissections, is completely brown or black, and requires the strength of Superman to even bend an arm or a leg. Not to mention that students are not dissection experts, more often than not ruining or unintentionally cutting relevant anatomical structures. 

Therefore, seeing fresh and unembalmed specimens feels like a breath of fresh air (literally speaking, too). You can actually see muscle movements together with the bones they act on, you can distinguish arteries, veins, and nerves because there are a lot more colours present on the specimens than simply brown, and the organs look like they are indeed parenchymatous rather than a stuffed rag doll. All of those aspects work in unison to add another dimension to your learning, making all those anatomical structures, layers, and concepts that much more real. 

Efficient editing and clear explanations

Although Acland’s anatomy videos will definitely not put Quentin Tarantino out of business nor win the Academy Awards, the cinematics, shots, and edits are very professional. They know what to show and when to do it. Anatomical structures are twisted and turned inside out and back-to-front as if you’d be holding them yourself. Parts of interest are either highlighted with dotted contours/pointing stick or coloured, helping you to focus your attention on them. This is a godsend when learning about the origins and insertions of muscles, or when trying to get your head around the bones of the skull (again, pun intended). In addition, anatomical layers are stripped and added as needed, revealing even more hidden anatomical gems underneath. 

All of these cinematic edits are topped with Dr. Acland’s calm tone and crystal clear explanations, which is the cherry on top of it all. He provides you with accurate descriptions of every bone, muscle, nerve, vessel, organ, compartment, and so on, leaving no stone (or shall we say, no layer) unturned.

However, we don’t live in a fairy tale, and this video series is far from perfect. When it comes to resolution, its age definitely becomes evident. The videos appear quite pixelated and can be problematic at times, especially nowadays when resolutions have reached 1000, 4K and even ultra-HD. The explanations provided during the video series are also far from complete compared to a textbook or other anatomy learning resources. If you manage to learn all the information presented in them, you’ll only be able to identify structures. It’s true, you will be an expert at that, but nothing more. Essentially, ‘Acland’s Video Atlas of Human Anatomy’ is a resource purely for your anatomy practical exams. To ace exams that cover the entire subject, you definitely need to divert your attention elsewhere. Are you willing to invest in a resource that covers only part of a subject and has an expiry date? What if we tell you that the same information can also be found in standard textbooks and atlases, such as ‘Rohens Color Atlas of Anatomy’ or modern online learning platforms? It’s up to you to decide...

Reviews 

As a health science student you’ve more than likely heard the saying that ‘repetition is the mother of all learning’. This is especially true for anatomy. Since information is coming at you like water out of a fire hose, studying an anatomical structure once and then setting it aside thinking that you have mastered it will only set you up for disaster. 

Dr. Acland is perfectly aware of this, hence he has included short review moments after each small section to identify the important anatomical structures once again, but also to give you a chance to test yourself. For example, you can ‘pause’ the video after a structure is highlighted and try and identify it yourself before the narrator. After a while of repetition, you can do a quick-fire session where you let the video play and only mute the sound, identifying the structures in real-time as they are shown on the screen. Rest assured, once you can identify it as fast as ‘Speedy Gonzales’ runs, then you’re definitely golden! 

Logical organization

Teaching anatomy in a logical and easy way is difficult. Fortunately, Acland’s anatomy videos follow the internationally recognised and ‘accepted’ format of learning - bones, followed by joints and ligaments, muscles, and finishing with the blood vessels and nerves. This is definitely the most logical arrangement of information, so brownie points for that. 

Also, they follow a ‘regional’ teaching approach, covering everything about a specific body part in one go before moving on to the next one. This is not as clear-cut and this approach will not suit everybody. Some academic institutions have a ‘systemic’ rather than a ‘regional’ approach to teaching anatomy and for those students, this video series can actually become more cumbersome than helpful, especially when searching for the desired content. In contrast to a textbook’s ‘Index’ for instance where everything is outlined clearly, the video tags and section titles are quite frankly, not that helpful. A lot of irrelevant sections can be suggested which can make you pull your hair out after a while - especially if your anatomy department uses a ‘systemic’ approach to teaching.    

Transcript

There is not much to say about this feature since the benefits are quite self-explanatory. Every volume, video, and section has a written transcript attached to the side that you can access at your leisure. Essentially, it consists of every word the narrator is saying during the video, allowing you to follow him more easily, if needed, or to have some sort of notes that you can study from later on. Of course, the transcripts cannot be used by themselves, because the writing style is informal and imprecise - there is no visual input to substitute for words such as ‘here’, for example. Nonetheless, it is a beneficial feature, even if it is only to help you understand the words/terms/accent, and so on.

Multiple choice questions

No anatomy learning resource comes without some sort of additional content or MCQs nowadays, right? ‘Acland’s Video Atlas of Human Anatomy’ is no different, offering you a collection of MCQs with the video subscription. They track your performance, provide you with links to the relevant anatomy videos that they relate to, and are timed, providing you with a faithful representation of a real practical exam. Your upcoming exam won’t know what hit it!

However, they are not as perfect as you might think. Although they are extremely helpful to master the first level of knowledge (recognition/identification), their usefulness stops there. The majority of questions follow a typical structure identification format, without more in-depth questions. Also, they are not repetitive since the questions are not varied enough, both in terms of question types and style of asking. Once you answer a question, you cannot return to it since you will remember the answer, or at least a fraction of it. As a result, you will not use active recall to its greatest potential. In addition, they don’t use spaced repetition, which can be a nail in the coffin when it comes to MCQs and question banks. As a result, more resources are needed to compensate for this after a while, which means more spending and being back to square one where you are still looking for a well-rounded anatomy learning resource.

Acland’s Video Atlas vs. Kenhub

An alternative that you could try would be Kenhub, an online learning platform that aims to simplify your learning as much as possible, and also make it enjoyable in the process. It has helped approximately 1 million students so far, so it can certainly help you too! The platform offers a video library, amongst other features, but comparing it with ‘Acland’s Video Atlas of Human Anatomy’ would be like comparing apples to oranges. However, Kenhub can offer you a lot more than just videos, providing you with a complete learning package and eliminating the need for additional resources that are absolutely required if you decide to use Acland’s anatomy videos. Here are the differences:

As you can see, Kenhub gives you a lot more options than identifying anatomical structures on dissected dead bodies. If you want to find out more about your favourite (or not so favourite) topics, you can select one of our detailed articles (found at the bottom of each study unit) and start reading about them. They also contain clinical boxes at the end to help you apply the knowledge.

When you get tired of reading, you can continue watching professionally designed videos narrated by Kenhub’s anatomy geeks or check up structures in our atlas. The subjects are not limited to cadavers only, but also include histology, radiological anatomy, and gross anatomical illustrations. By the way, we keep everything very simple, highlighting and explaining one structure at a time because we believe that seeing everything in one go can potentially confuse you (learning anatomy in 3D is not as amazing as you might think!).

After you finish your study session, you want to know how effective it was, right? Or perhaps you want to revise topics that you’ve covered a while ago. Kenhub has got your back for this too! By completing our quizzes, which are based on spaced repetition, you are forced to use active recall, the gold standard of today’s learning.

Last but not least, we understand that anatomy can feel overwhelming so we’re ready to help with that too by offering you this guide to studying anatomy, which will help you decide which techniques you're going to use to simplify your anatomy learning. By the way, all of the above features and the entire platform are seemingly integrated and adapted to work on all your portable electronic devices, so it’s a no-brainer.

What are you waiting for? Go ahead and try Kenhub out for yourself! However, ‘Acland’s Video Atlas of Human Anatomy’ and ‘Kenhub’ are only two out of many anatomy learning resources that you can use. The important aspect is to try a couple of them for a while and see which one suits you best. Ignore what your friend is using and even what your professor recommends. At the end of the day, you are the one using that resource every single day, for hours on end, so it’s important that you like it and not someone else. We hope this article has helped you a bit with your decision. All the best, and good luck studying!