The Corticospinal and CorticobulbarTracts: An Animated Three-Dimensional Instructional Aid

The complex pathways of the neural tracts, from the cerebral cortex, through the complex anatomy of the brainstem, can be difficult for medical students to visualize and challenging for instructors to convey. Text references, 2-dimensional illustrations, and anatomical crosssectional photographs have been the most useful teaching aids available for the lecture room. Although this material is fundamentally useful, medical students often find them ineffective for comprehending the 3-dimensional aspect of the subject. Based on the success of the first animated neural tract by Chris Akers in his thesis project The Spinothalamic Tract: An Animated 3-dimensional Instructional Aid (Akers, 2003), the goal of this project was to continue assisting instructors in teaching the concepts of the corticospinal and corticobulbar tracts by producing a digitally animated, 3-dimensional instructional aid. An animation of this nature and content will be a valuable addition to the existing study material available to medical students.