ScienceThe ProfessorBeginner
Mapping the Human Body, a free science course on Tomo

Mapping the Human Body

Discover how the living human body is built, organized, and engineered to function. Learn to read anatomical landmarks, understand how joints and muscles generate motion, and trace how internal organs coordinate life beneath your skin.

Like Duolingo, but for Mapping the Human Body. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

25 levels across 3 sections, about 50 minutes end to end, roughly 10 days at five minutes a day. It moves through How the Body Moves and Holds Itself Up; The Inner Pipeline: Air, Blood, and Fuel; and Coordination, Filtering, and Defense. It starts from scratch.

25 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Barnaby the Bone, the guide who teaches the Mapping the Human Body course
Mapping the Human Body
with Barnaby the Bone
25
Levels
3
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Mapping the Human Body

  • In anatomical position, the body is treated as standing upright facing forward with palms forward, regardless of how the person is actually lying or curled up
  • 'Superior' always points toward the head as defined by this standard pose, not toward the ceiling of the room
  • Directional anatomical terms describe one structure's position relative to another, not a fixed absolute label
  • The heart sits posterior to (behind) the breastbone, but anterior to (in front of) the spine
  • Bones that sit directly beneath the skin don't shift and can be felt from the outside
  • Clinicians use these firm, unchanging bone edges as landmarks to reliably pinpoint soft organs, pulses, and nerves beneath
  • The body divides its interior into fluid-lined cavities (like the thoracic and abdominopelvic cavities)
  • The fluid lubricating these cavity linings allows vital organs to slide, expand, and absorb physical shock without rubbing abrasively against neighboring organs
  • While the skeleton and outer muscles form a mirrored left-right pair, most internal visceral organs are single and offset
  • The bulky liver occupies most of the upper right abdomen, while the spleen tucks into the upper left
  • Kidneys and lungs exist as paired structures on both sides of the midline
  • Bone is living tissue that constantly remodels itself depending on how much physical demand is placed on it
  • Weight-bearing exercise and gravity signal bones to lay down more minerals and stay strong
  • Without regular physical resistance or gravity, the body resorbs bone material faster than it builds it
  • The axial skeleton forms the central axis of the body (skull, spine, ribs) designed primarily to protect vital organs
  • The appendicular skeleton consists of the limbs and their girdles, adapted to act as levers for movement and handling objects
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives Mapping the Human Body the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

Mapping the Human Body

A person is lying flat on their back on an exam table. Which direction does 'superior' point?

Get it right to open this lesson and 24 more in the app.

Course map

Where Mapping the Human Body takes you

  1. 1

    How the Body Moves and Holds Itself Up

    • Finding Your Way Around the Body
    • The Skeleton as an Architecture of Levers
    • How Muscles Pull the World
  2. 2

    The Inner Pipeline: Air, Blood, and Fuel

    • Breath Mechanics and Gas Exchange
    • The Circulatory Loop and the Heart
    • Digestion and Nutrient Extraction
  3. 3

    Coordination, Filtering, and Defense

    • The Nervous System and Reflex Arcs
    • Waste Clearance, Fluid Balance, and Skin

3 sections · 8 units · 25 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

New

Tomo is in ChatGPT

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How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Professor

Mapping the Human Body is taught in the Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

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Start Mapping the Human Body today.

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