Exploring the Human Head and Thorax

And I'll show after we've removed the chest wall. You can see the right lung and the left lung and the parietal pleura right there. I'm going to bring this model over just as a comparison. And here we can see that I've cut the parietal pericardium. And then showed the heart.

I'm going to drop down a few layers here to show some of the other structures that one can see on the internal heart. So using this model, you can see structures such as the papillary muscles and chordae, tendineae and even some of the valves. Externally, we can see all of the coronary circulation. For example, here is the left anterior descending artery right there. And inside here, deep inside, we can see things like the phrenic nerve and the vagus nerve way back there.

We can also see great vessels coming across such as the Brachiocephalic. This is the left Brachiocephalic right there. And here are some of the axillary structures, for example, the brachial plexus. On the next layer down, we can even see more of these structures. So here is the ascending aorta and the aortic arch. I've opened up the arch and the ascending aorta so we can see the inside. All of the chambers of the heart are visible within this model. And we can even see the structures making up the root of the lung. Here's the bronchi and the pulmonary arteries and the pulmonary veins. By removing even these structures, getting down to the deepest layer, we can now see the structures of the posterior mediastinum, including intercostal nerve vasculature, sympathetic chain right there, and even the azygos venous system and the thoracic aorta. And here is a splanchnic nerve.

And lastly, in this model, we can start seeing the continuity between the thoracic structures in these great vessels and the vessels and structures going up through the neck.