Apurba Patra

COVID-19 pandemic has created a lot of turmoil in medical teaching, the magnitude of impact is many folds in the subject of anatomy, as it is practical based. A major challenge for anatomy teachers is to replicate the experience of practical exposures. These exposures range from cadaveric dissection to demonstration of bones, museum specimens, and histology slides, where they will have interactive communication with students, and thus help in the enhancement of communication and clinical skills among them. In recent days, anatomy teachers throughout the globe started using various advanced technology to make the teaching-learning session more interesting. In pre-pandemic era, usage of such advancements in information and communication technology was a 'choice'. But pandemic has changed the situation drastically, what was a 'choice' earlier is now an 'obligation.' Presently although infection rate is low, vaccination rate is high, most of the medical schools re-opened for usual offline teaching, still body donation is all time low making the situation 'back to square one'. Keeping such unprecedented situations in mind, we need to incorporate various innovative educational technologies in day-to-day teaching-learning methodologies.

Background: The human paracentral lobule (PCL) is the medial continuation of the precentral and postcentral gyri. It has important functional area related to the lower limb and perineum. Its visible surface that corresponds to magnetic resonance imaging scout images varies in morphology, so it requires exact data. Studies related to such data are rare. With such a facile, we studied the morphology and morphometry of PCL. Materials and Methods: Fifty formalin-fixed adult human brains dissected in the midsagittal plane were used in this study. First, the morphological types of PCL and its boundary were determined, followed by morphometry of its extrasulcal surface using digital vernier calipers. Measurements were done along the anteroposterior axis (length) and vertical axis (height). In addition to that, the extent of motor and sensory area into PCL was also measured. Results: Three distinct morphological types of PCL were found: continuous (2%), partially segmented (91%), and completely segmented type (7%). In completely segmented type, a short transitional lobulolimbic gyrus was also found in three cases. The mean extrasulcal surface of the left PCL was significantly larger, both in males (left 10.67 cm2 vs. right 8.80 cm2) and in females (left 8.80 cm2 vs. right 6.99 cm2). Irrespective of gender and sidedness, motor area was significantly larger than the sensory area. Conclusion: Reported data will be useful in diagnosis and treatment of diseases affecting the human PCL. Variations in the distribution of sensorimotor cortex over PCL may help further assessment of hemispheric lateralization and the location of central sulcus as a reliable indicator of cytoarchitectonic borders.