HealthThe BestieBeginner
Mapping the Human Body, a free health course on Tomo

Mapping the Human Body

Learn to read your own body like a clinical map. Discover how surface landmarks reveal internal organs, how your chest and abdomen are organized, and how spinal nerve highways route sensation.

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.

A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Surface Landmarks and Core Compartments and Mapping Organs and Pathways. It starts from scratch.

12 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Atlas the Axolotl, the guide who teaches the Mapping the Human Body course
Mapping the Human Body
with Atlas the Axolotl
12
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Mapping the Human Body

  • Bones sit directly beneath the surface in key areas, making them rigid and unmoving reference points
  • Soft tissues like skin folds, fat, and muscle shift when a patient lies down, stands, or changes weight
  • Clinicians rely on bony points so their internal anatomical map stays accurate regardless of body size
  • The sternal notch is the soft hollow you can feel right at the base of the neck, marking the top of the breastbone
  • The xiphoid process is the small, firm point at the bottom of the breastbone where the rib cage meets in the center
  • The flat bone running between these two landmarks shields the heart and major vessels directly behind it
  • Resting your hands on the firm upper crests of the hips creates a horizontal level across the lower spine
  • This level intersects right around the fourth lumbar vertebra (L4), safely below where the solid spinal cord ends
  • Clinicians use this landmark line to locate safe spaces between vertebrae for procedures like spinal taps
  • The collarbone acts as a protective strut holding the shoulder away from the chest
  • Directly behind and beneath each collarbone runs the heavy bundle of nerves and large blood vessels feeding that arm
  • A severe collarbone fracture can threaten these underlying vessels or cause numbness and weakness in the arm
  • In a healthy body, the liver sits mostly tucked up under the protection of the right lower ribcage
  • Feeling the lower rim of the ribs gives an exact baseline for where the liver's edge normally ends
  • If a doctor feels a firm organ edge protruding far below the right rib border, it suggests an enlarged liver
  • The bulk of the heart sits right behind the breastbone in the middle of the chest
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 Body Using Bones

Why can't doctors rely on skin folds or nipples to find an internal organ?

Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.

Course map

Where Mapping the Human Body takes you

  1. 1

    Surface Landmarks and Core Compartments

    • Using Surface Bones as Internal Map Coordinates
    • Navigating the Thoracic Cavity
  2. 2

    Mapping Organs and Pathways

    • Decoding the Abdominal Quadrants
    • Tracing the Spine and Nerve Highways

2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

New

Tomo is in ChatGPT

Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.

Add Tomo to ChatGPT
How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Bestie

Mapping the Human Body is taught in the Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. 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.

Keep going

More Health on Tomo

Start free

Start Mapping the Human Body today.

Download Tomo, search Mapping the Human Body, and play your first lesson in under a minute.