In this episode of Crash Course, Hank introduces you to the complex history and terminology of Anatomy & Physiology. Air Date : 6th-Jan-2015  Read More

In this episode of Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology, Hank gives you a brief history of histology and introduces you to the different types and functions of your body's tissues. Air Date : 12th-Jan-2015  Read More

Today on Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology, Hank breaks down the parts and functions of one of your body's unsung heroes: your epithelial tissue. Air Date : 19th-Jan-2015  Read More

On today's episode of Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology, Hank continues our exploration of tissues, with an introduction to your connective tissues. Air Date : 26th-Jan-2015  Read More

Today Hank wraps up our look at Connective Tissues with a discussion of its various types and a breakdown of what you can and can't easily break down. Also chicken. Air Date : 2nd-Feb-2015  Read More

Anatomy & Physiology continues with a look at your biggest organ - your skin. Air Date : 9th-Feb-2015  Read More

Today Hank wraps up this look at your integumentary system and all the hard work it does protecting you from and helping you interact with the world around you. Air Date : 16th-Feb-2015  Read More

Today Hank kicks off our look around MISSION CONTROL: your nervous system. Air Date : 23rd-Feb-2015  Read More

What do you and a sack of batteries have in common? Today, Hank explains. Air Date : 2nd-Mar-2015  Read More

We continue our tour of the nervous system with a look at synapses and the crazy stuff cocaine does to your body. Air Date : 10th-Mar-2015  Read More

Today Hank talks about your central nervous system. In this episode we'll explore how your brain develops and how important location is for each of your brain's many functions. Air Date : 23rd-Mar-2015  Read More

It is now time to meet the system that helps your crazy brain stay in touch with the outside world. We follow up last week's tour of the central nervous system with a look at your peripheral nervous system, its afferent and efferent divisions, how it processes information, the reflex arc, and what your brain has to say about pain. Air Date : 30th-Mar-2015  Read More

Hank takes you on a tour of your two-part autonomic nervous system. This episode explains how your sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system work together as foils, balancing each other out. Their key anatomical differences - where nerve fibers originate and where their ganglia are located - drive their distinct anatomical functions, making your sympathetic nervous system the "fight or flight" while your parasympathetic nervous system is for "resting and digesting." Air Date : 6th-Apr-2015  Read More

Hank tries not to stress you out too much as he delves into the functions and terminology of your sympathetic nervous system. Air Date : 13th-Apr-2015  Read More

This week we are looking at your parasympathetic division, which is the "resting and digesting" unit. Unfortunately, learning about this de-stressing division also involves a whole lot of memorization. Don't worry, though - we've got some mnemonic devices to help you out! Air Date : 20th-Apr-2015  Read More

Hank resists the urge to devour a slice of pizza so that he can walk you through the way we experience our major special senses. It all boils down to one thing: sensory cells translating chemical, electromagnetic, and mechanical stimuli into action potentials that our nervous system can make sense of. Today we're focusing on smell (olfaction) and taste (gustation), which are chemical senses that call on chemoreceptors. As usual, we'll begin with a quick look at how these things can go wrong. Air Date : 27th-Apr-2015  Read More

Crash Course A&P continues the journey through sensory systems with a look at how your sense of hearing works. We follow sounds as they work there way into the ear where they are registered and transformed into action potentials. This mechanism not only helps you hear but also helps maintain your equilibrium. Air Date : 4th-May-2015  Read More

Next stop in our tour of your sensory systems? VISION. With a little help from an optical illusion, we take a look inside your eyes to try to figure out how your sense of vision works -- and how it can be tricked. Air Date : 11th-May-2015  Read More

Today Hank explains the skeletal system and why astronauts Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko are out in space studying it. He talks about the anatomy of the skeletal system, including the flat, short, and irregular bones, and their individual arrangements of compact and spongy bone. He'll also cover the microanatomy of bones, particularly the osteons and their inner lamella. And finally he will introduce the process of bone remodeling, which is carried out by crews of osteocytes, osteoblasts, and osteoclasts. Air Date : 18th-May-2015  Read More

We continue our look at your bones and skeletal system, skipping over the silly kid's song in favor of a more detailed look at your your axial and appendicular skeleton. This episode also talks about the structural and functional classifications of your joints and the major types of body movement that they facilitate. Air Date : 26th-May-2015  Read More

We're kicking off our exploration of muscles with a look at the complex and important relationship between actin and myosin. Your smooth, cardiac, and skeletal muscles create movement by contracting and releasing in a process called the sliding filament model. Your skeletal muscles are constructed like a rope made of bundles of protein fibers, and that the smallest strands are your actin and myosin myofilaments. Its their use of calcium and ATP that causes the binding and unbinding that makes sarcomeres contract and relax. Air Date : 8th-Jun-2015  Read More

Hank calls in a friend to do his push ups for him today to explain how skeletal muscles work together to create and reverse movements. Hank and Claire also demonstrate the role size plays in motor units, the three phase cycle of muscle twitches, and how the strength and frequency of an impulse affects the strength and duration of a contraction. This episode also explains twitch summation, tetanus, and isotonic vs. isometric movements. Air Date : 15th-Jun-2015  Read More

Hank begins teaching you about your endocrine system by explaining how it uses glands to produce hormones. These hormones are either amino-acid based and water soluble, or steroidal and lipid-soluble, and may target many types of cells or just turn on specific ones. He will also touch on hormone cascades, and how the HPA axis effects your stress response. Air Date : 22nd-Jun-2015  Read More

In the second half of our look at the endocrine system, Hank discusses chemical homeostasis and hormone cascades. Specifically, he looks at the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid axis, or HPT axis, and all the ways your body can suffer when that system, or your hormones in general, get out of whack. Air Date : 29th-Jun-2015  Read More

Your heart gets a lot of attention from poets, songwriters, and storytellers, but today Hank's gonna tell you how it really works. The heart’s ventricles, atria, and valves create a pump that maintains both high and low pressure to circulate blood from the heart to the body through your arteries, and bring it back to the heart through your veins. You'll also learn what your blood pressure measurements mean when we talk about systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Air Date : 6th-Jul-2015  Read More

Today we're talking the heart and heart throbs -- both literal and those of the televised variety. Hank explains how your heart’s pacemaker cells use leaky membranes to generate their own action potentials, and how the resulting electricity travels through the cardiac conduction pathway from SA Node to Purkinje fibers, allowing your heart to contract. He's also going to make you better able to spot inaccuracies in medical dramas by explaining how defibrillators work to reset the rhythm of your heart. Air Date : 13th-Jul-2015  Read More

Now that we've discussed blood, we're beginning our look at how it gets around your body. Today Hank explains your blood vessels and their basic three-layer structure of your blood vessels. We're also going over how those structures differ slightly in different types of vessels. We will also follow the flow of blood from your heart to capillaries in your right thumb, and all the way back to your heart again. Air Date : 20th-Jul-2015  Read More

And now we return to blood vessels. In this episode, we start discussing what blood pressure is, how it can become "high", and what that means for our health. One of the more interesting points is that your body has ways of dealing with high blood pressure, but they're not ways we want out bodies to operate on a full time basis. And why can't we butter our bacon? WHY!?!?! Air Date : 27th-Jul-2015  Read More

Now that we've talked about your blood vessels, we're going to zoom in a little closer and talk about your blood itself. We'll start by outlining the basic components of blood -- including erythrocytes, leukocytes, platelets, and plasma -- as well as the basic process of hemostasis that stops bleeding, and how antigens are responsible for the blood type that you have. By the end of this episode, you should be totally prepared for your next blood drive. Air Date : 3rd-Aug-2015  Read More

It's time to start talking about some of the terrible things you can do to your own body, like blood doping. We'll start by explaining the structure and function of your erythrocytes, and of hemoglobin, which they use to carry oxygen. We'll follow the formation and life cycle of a red blood cell, including how their levels are regulated by EPO and their signalling molecules. We'll wrap up by looking at how blood doping works and how it is truly a recipe for disaster. Air Date : 11th-Aug-2015  Read More

So we all know that breathing is pretty important, right? Today we're going to talk about how it works, starting with the nameless evolutionary ancestor that we inherited this from, and continuing to the mechanics of both simple diffusion and bulk flow, as well as the physiology of breathing, and finishing with the anatomy of both the conducting zone and the respiratory zone of your respiratory system. Air Date : 24th-Aug-2015  Read More