Tools and resources for neuroanatomy education: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: The aim of this review was to identify studies exploring neuroanatomy teaching tools and their impact in learning, as a basis towards the implementation of a neuroanatomy program in the context of a curricular reform in medical education. METHODS: Computer-assisted searches were conducted through March 2017 in the PubMed, Web of Science, Medline, Current Contents Connect, KCI and Scielo Citation Index databases. Four sets of keywords were used, combining “neuroanatomy” with “education”, “teaching”, “learning” and “student*”. Studies were reviewed independently by two readers, and data collected were confirmed by a third reader. RESULTS: Of the 214 studies identified, 29 studies reported data on the impact of using specific neuroanatomy teaching tools. Most of them (83%) were published in the last 8 years and were conducted in the United States of America (65.52%). Regarding the participants, medical students were the most studied sample (37.93%) and the majority of the studies (65.52%) had less than 100 participants. Approximately half of the studies included in this review used digital teaching tools (e.g., 3D computer neuroanatomy models), whereas the remaining used non-digital learning tools (e.g., 3D physical models). CONCLUSIONS: Our work highlight the progressive interest in the study of neuroanatomy teaching tools over the last years, as evidenced from the number of publications and highlight the need to consider new tools, coping with technological development in medical education.