Ligaments and muscles connect these vertebrae, and a disc separates most of the vertebrae and acts like a cushion to absorb shock along the spine. Each vertebra is numbered and grouped into 5 regions.

Sonia Gomez Parra, a Ph.D. researcher who mentored the students designing these new models, explains, “Each model comes with a pelvis, cervical models (20 per set), cervical model holder ...

"We imagined the cervical spine as a cantilever bridge," said Zhang ... of the muscular events that precede fatigue. Unlike ...