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Anatomy of the back: muscles and clinical anatomy

Part 2 of 2
Published on November 30, 2025   37 min

A selection of talks on Physiology & Anatomy

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0:00
Hello. I'm Joanna Matthan. I work at the University of Newcastle in the Dental Department, the School of Dental Sciences. I'm a senior lecturer and director of academic studies. Welcome back. This is the second part of my talk on the back. In the first part of my talk, I covered the relevance of the back, some surface anatomy and a major part of the osteology relating to the back region, which we'll hopefully link up to the clinical anatomy of the back.
0:34
We're moving on now to the musculature of the back. In this image, you can see on the right-hand side the skin and some of the bony protrusions that are visible to the naked eye. On the left-hand side, projected onto the image, you can see bony landmarks from underneath the skin, as well as the surrounding musculature that underlies the skin.
0:57
The musculature relating to the back is classified into superficial and deep muscles. There is an intermediate category as well. Those are predominantly respiratory muscles. I won't be talking about them in this lecture. Together, the superficial and the intermediate muscles form an extrinsic layer. Muscles that relate to the most superficial layers of the back and the deepest muscles of the back, which are also known as the extensor muscles of the back, are the intrinsic muscles. Now these two layers, extrinsic and intrinsic, are separated by a very thick fascia known as the thoracolumbar fascia. If we start from

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Anatomy of the back: muscles and clinical anatomy

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