“Hands‐On” white matter anatomy: Using Air Anatomy gestures and tractography on simple brain sections to enhance teaching of white matter directions

Teaching white matter (WM) anatomy to undergraduates is challenging. This is partly because WM fibers are oriented intricately and Klingler's dissection, the gold standard method used to demonstrate it, often requires time, advanced anatomical knowledge, and refined dissection skills. Simple sections of the brain, on the other hand, are performed universally in anatomy laboratories, but is often described as having obscured 3D information regarding WM anatomy. Using sectional anatomy for WM education also has a two-fold advantage-WM anatomy helps understand functional organization of brain, and sections directly correlate with cross-sectional imaging that health professionals routinely use in their practice. Some earlier manuals mention that WM on simple brain sections in formalin-fixed specimen show patterns of shades which correlate with axonal directionality. In this article, the authors expand these shading patterns and describes how it becomes more pronounced with Alston's stain, as compared to formalin-fixed specimen. The shades were correlated with diffusion tensor imaging tractography from a Human Connectome Project subject data. As a refinement, the authors propose a method of combining these observations with "Air Anatomy" hand gestures-a pedagogical approach previously published in ASE to create a simple, intuitive and accessible method for teaching spatial concepts of white matter using simple sections. This article proposes that this trimodal graphical approach of observing sections (unstained or stained), correlating with tractography and adding "Air Anatomy" hand gestures can intuitively help diverse neuroanatomy learners to imbibe spatial geometry as well as pathways of the fiber bundles.