Why can’t you pinpoint exactly where your organs are?

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If you’ve learnt human biology you know roughly where they are, but why can’t you say exactly where your liver is for example? Does the brain just not know?

In: Biology

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The brain doesn’t need to know where anything is, it just needs to have access to them via blood or nerves. If you detach the liver and manage to graft and stitch blood and vessels and nerves 3 meters long to have your liver 3 meters away from you (assuming it’s still in the same physiological conditions), your brain will continue to function normally sending and receiving signals and releasing hormones to the liver. Your brain does however fine tune signals based on the time it takes for them to reach the organ and come back with feedback, but it can easily adapt.

And of course you can tell quite well where organs are (assuming they follow the general trend you study in anatomy in medical school). Doctors learn topographic anatomy, where they memorize the location of structures and organs in reference to other structures (such as skin folds, bone protrusions, ribs, etc). So if a doctor palpitates you on the outside, he can tell you where your organs begin and end.

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