title: Musculoskeletal pareidolia in medical education.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Medical educators use a variety of strategies to help medical students and resident doctors understand and remember complex topics.
  
  
  METHODS
  One teaching tool is matching up radiographic appearances with unrelated, common, non-medical images, in order to help students easily recognise clinical patterns.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  However, even among medical educators who use this approach, many are not aware of the neuropsychiatric phenomenon they are using, known as pareidolia. We will describe pareidolia (a form of patternicity) and give two examples of its use in the clinical teaching of musculoskeletal imaging abnormalities: the winking owl and the Scottie dog.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Foye
authors.forename: Dena
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Abdelshahed
authors.forename: Shounuck
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Patel
mesh_terms: D003479:Curriculum; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008159:Lumbar Vertebrae / Q000002:abnormalities* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D009139:Musculoskeletal Abnormalities / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D009484:Neuropsychology / Q000379:methods; D011859:Radiography