Representações Sociais de corpo humano por estudantes de Anatomia de uma universidade brasileira

Social Representations are a way in which individuals and groups make sense of and give meaning to their surroundings, explain reality, and justify behaviors. The aim of this study was to understand the social representations of the human body among undergraduate Biomedical students at a university in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This qualitative study was based on Social Representations Theory and was conducted using a free word association test with 66 students enrolled in a higher education institution. Data analysis was carried out using co-occurrence analysis and prototypical analysis, with the assistance of the Evocation2003 software. The results reveal a mechanistic social representation of the human body, focused on biological and functional aspects, with the brain as the main cognem that sustains the entire representation.