Terra Incognita in anatomical museology – A literature review from the perspective of evidence-based care

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Abstract

<p xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="first" id="d12489576e99">The care of historical collections in anatomical museums is a highly specialized subject requiring advanced knowledge. When searching for practical information on this subject, the authors were not able to find appropriate literature based on scientific research. The absence of this literature is probably due to the specialized nature of the subject and the poorly defined classification of this type of museum. The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic literature review to identify (i) the current state of knowledge of anatomical museology and (ii) the nature and determinants of ongoing research on anatomical museum objects. </p>

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Unlocking the vault: next-generation museum population genomics.

Ke Bi, Tyler Linderoth, Dan Vanderpool … (2013)

Natural history museum collections provide unique resources for understanding how species respond to environmental change, including the abrupt, anthropogenic climate change of the past century. Ideally, researchers would conduct genome-scale screening of museum specimens to explore the evolutionary consequences of environmental changes, but to date such analyses have been severely limited by the numerous challenges of working with the highly degraded DNA typical of historic samples. Here, we circumvent these challenges by using custom, multiplexed, exon capture to enrich and sequence ~11,000 exons (~4 Mb) from early 20th-century museum skins. We used this approach to test for changes in genomic diversity accompanying a climate-related range retraction in the alpine chipmunks (Tamias alpinus) in the high Sierra Nevada area of California, USA. We developed robust bioinformatic pipelines that rigorously detect and filter out base misincorporations in DNA derived from skins, most of which likely resulted from postmortem damage. Furthermore, to accommodate genotyping uncertainties associated with low-medium coverage data, we applied a recently developed probabilistic method to call single-nucleotide polymorphisms and estimate allele frequencies and the joint site frequency spectrum. Our results show increased genetic subdivision following range retraction, but no change in overall genetic diversity at either nonsynonymous or synonymous sites. This case study showcases the advantages of integrating emerging genomic and statistical tools in museum collection-based population genomic applications. Such technical advances greatly enhance the value of museum collections, even where a pre-existing reference is lacking and points to a broad range of potential applications in evolutionary and conservation biology. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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Anatomy teaching: ghosts of the past, present and future.

John C McLachlan, Debra Patten (2006)

Anatomy teaching has perhaps the longest history of any component of formalised medical education. In this article we briefly consider the history of dissection, but also review the neglected topic of the history of the use of living anatomy. The current debates about the advantages and disadvantages of cadavers, prosection versus dissection, and the use of living anatomy and radiology instead of cadavers are discussed. Future prospects are considered, along with some of the factors that might inhibit change.

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The effectiveness of virtual reality-based technology on anatomy teaching: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies

Jingjie Zhao, Xinliang Xu, Hualin Jiang … (2020)

Background Virtual reality (VR) is an innovation that permits the individual to discover and operate within three-dimensional (3D) environment to gain practical understanding. This research aimed to examine the general efficiency of VR for teaching medical anatomy. Methods We executed a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies of the performance of VR anatomy education. We browsed five databases from the year 1990 to 2019. Ultimately, 15 randomized controlled trials with a teaching outcome measure analysis were included. Two authors separately chose studies, extracted information, and examined the risk of bias. The primary outcomes were examination scores of the students. Secondary outcomes were the degrees of satisfaction of the students. Random-effects models were used for the pooled evaluations of scores and satisfaction degrees. Standardized mean difference (SMD) was applied to assess the systematic results. The heterogeneity was determined by I 2 statistics, and then was investigated by meta-regression and subgroup analyses. Results In this review, we screened and included fifteen randomized controlled researches (816 students). The pooled analysis of primary outcomes showed that VR improves test scores moderately compared with other approaches (standardized mean difference [SMD] = 0.53; 95% Confidence Interval [CI] 0.09–0.97, p < 0.05; I 2 = 87.8%). The high homogeneity indicated that the studies were different from each other. Therefore, we carried out meta-regression as well as subgroup analyses using seven variables (year, country, learners, course, intervention, comparator, and duration). We found that VR improves post-intervention test score of anatomy compared with other types of teaching methods. Conclusions The finding confirms that VR may act as an efficient way to improve the learners’ level of anatomy knowledge. Future research should assess other factors like degree of satisfaction, cost-effectiveness, and adverse reactions when evaluating the teaching effectiveness of VR in anatomy.