Movements of the body are brought about by the harmonious contraction and relaxation of selected muscles. Contraction occurs when nerve impulses are transmitted across neuromuscular junctions to the membrane covering each muscle fiber. Most muscles are not continuously contracting but are kept in a state ready to contract. The slightest movement or even the intention to move results in widespread activity of the muscles of the trunk and limbs.
Movements may be intrinsic to the body itself and carried out by muscles of the trunk and body cavity. Examples are those involved in breathing, swallowing, laughing, sneezing, urinating, and defecating. Such movements are largely carried out by smooth muscles of the viscera (alimentary canal and bladder, for example); they are innervated by efferent sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves. Other movements relate the body to the environment, either for moving or for signaling to other individuals. These are carried out by the skeletal muscles of the trunk and limbs. Skeletal muscles are attached to bones and produce movement at the joints. They are innervated by efferent motor nerves and sometimes by efferent sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves.
Every movement of the body has to be correct for force, speed, and position. These aspects of movement are continuously reported to the central nervous system by receptors sensitive to position, posture, equilibrium, and internal conditions of the body. These receptors are called proprioceptors, and those proprioceptors that keep a continuous report on the position of limbs are the muscle spindles and tendon organs.
Movements can be organized at several levels of the nervous system. At the lowest level are movements of the viscera, some of which do not involve the central nervous system, being controlled by neurons of the autonomic nervous system within the viscera themselves. Movements of the trunk and limbs occur at the next level of the spinal cord. If the spinal cord is severed so that no nerve impulses arrive from the brain, certain movements of the trunk and limbs below the level of the injury can still occur. At a higher level, respiratory movements are controlled by the lower brainstem. The upper brainstem controls muscles of the eye, the bladder, and basic movements of walking and running. At the next level is the hypothalamus. It commands certain totalities of movement, such as those of vomiting, urinating and defecating, and curling up and falling asleep. At the highest level is gray matter of the cerebral hemispheres, both the cortex and the subcortical basal ganglia. This is the level of conscious control of movements.
Peter W. NathanSensory receptors
Only a minority of the nerve fibers supplying a muscle are ordinary motor fibers that actually make it contract. The rest are either afferent sensory fibers telling the central nervous system what the muscle is doing or specialized motor fibers regulating the behavior of the sensory nerve endings. If the constant feedback of proprioceptive information from the muscles, tendons, and joints is cut off, movements can still occur, but they cannot be adjusted to suit changing conditions; nor can new motor skills be developed. As stated above, the sensory receptors chiefly concerned with body movement are the muscle spindles and tendon organs. The muscle spindle is vastly more complicated than the tendon organ, so that, although it has been much more intensively studied, it is less well understood.
Tendon organs
The tendon organ consists simply of an afferent nerve fiber that terminates in a number of branches upon slips of tendon where the tendons join onto muscle fibers. By lying in series with muscle, the tendon organ is well placed to signal muscular tension. In fact, the afferent fiber of the tendon organ is sufficiently sensitive to generate a useful signal on the contraction of a single muscle fiber. In this way tendon organs provide a continuous flow of information on the level of muscular contraction.
Muscle spindles
The familiar knee-jerk reflex, tested routinely by physicians, is a spinal reflex in which a brief, rapid tap on the knee excites muscle spindle afferent neurons, which then excite the motor neurons of the stretched muscle via a single synapse in the spinal cord. In this simplest of reflexes, which is not transmitted through interneurons of the spinal cord, the delay (approximately 0.02 second) primarily occurs in the conduction of impulses to and from the spinal cord.
Information provided by muscle spindles is also utilized by the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex in ways that continue to elude detailed analysis. One example is kinesthesia, or the subjective sensory awareness of the position of limbs in space. It might be supposed (as it long was) that sensory receptors in joints, not the muscles, provide kinesthetic signals, since people are very aware of joint angle and not at all of the length of the various muscles involved. In fact, kinesthesia depends largely upon the integration within the cerebral cortex of signals from the muscle spindles.
New features of the structure and function of the muscle spindle continue to be discovered. Within it are several specialized muscle fibers, known as intrafusal muscle fibers (from Latin fusus, “spindle”). The muscle spindle is several millimeters long, and approximately five intrafusal muscle fibers run throughout its length. They are considerably thinner and shorter than ordinary skeletal muscle fibers, although they show similar contractions and have the same histological appearance. The characteristic central swelling of the spindle (giving it a shape reminiscent of the spindle of a spinning wheel) is produced by fluid contained in a capsule surrounding the central millimeter of the intrafusal fibers.
Classically, the nerve terminals are considered to be of three kinds: primary sensory endings, secondary sensory endings, and plate motor endings. There are approximately equal numbers of primary and secondary sensory endings, so they may be considered equally important. However, the primary, or annulo-spiral, ending has traditionally attracted the most attention, largely through its prominent appearance and the simplicity of its chief reflex action, the tendon jerk. It consists of a large axon, which branches to wind spirals around the equatorial region of every intrafusal fiber. The secondary ending is supplied by a smaller axon. It has less-dramatic “flower spray” terminals lying primarily upon the smaller intrafusal fibers to one side of the primary endings. The reflex action of the secondary endings is incompletely understood. The plate motor endings lie toward the ends of the intrafusal fibers. They are fairly similar to the motor end plates of the skeletal, or extrafusal, muscle fibers.
The working of this elaborate piece of biological machinery is not yet fully understood. The muscle spindle lies parallel with the main muscle fibers and so sends a signal whenever the muscle changes its length. Both types of sensory endings increase their discharge of impulses when the muscle is stretched and reduce their firing when the muscle is slackened. The primary ending differs from the secondary ending in two important respects: first, it is much more sensitive to the changing length of the muscle; second, it is much more sensitive to small stimuli than large ones. Together, these properties explain the exquisite sensitivity of the primary sensory ending to the stimulus of a tendon tap, which has little effect on the secondary ending or on the tendon organ. The essential principle is that the ability of the muscle spindle to signal a wide range of movement is increased by its having two separate output channels of different sensitivity.
Most of the intrafusal fibers of the muscle spindle receive specialized fusimotor nerve fibers. These are much smaller than the motor axons innervating extrafusal muscle fibers and are given the name gamma (γ) efferents. Because their only function is to regulate the behavior of the muscle spindles, their stimulation produces no significant contraction of the muscle as a whole. The γ efferents are of two functionally distinct kinds with different effects on the afferent fibers—especially on the primary ending. One type, the dynamic fusimotor axon, increases the normal sensitivity of the primary ending to movement; the other type, the static fusimotor axon, decreases its sensitivity, causing it to behave much more like a secondary ending. Thus, the two types of efferent fiber provide a means whereby the sensitivity of the muscle spindle to external stimuli may be regulated over a very wide range. Stimulation of both types also increases the rate of firing of the afferent fibers when the length of the muscle is constant; this is called a biasing action. It is thought that they produce these different effects by supplying different types of intrafusal fiber.
In addition to receiving specialized fusimotor fibers, the muscle spindle may also receive, though on a less-regular basis, branches of ordinary extrafusal motor axons. Called alpha (α) efferents, these fibers have either a static or a dynamic effect. The physiologically important point is that most of the motor supply to the muscle spindles is largely independent of that of the ordinary muscle fibers, and only a small part is obligatorily coupled with them. The specific mechanisms by which the sensitivity of the spindle is regulated remain obscure; they may differ from muscle to muscle and for movements of different kinds.
Peter B.C. Matthews