Chapter 6


There are three types of muscle tissue
(named above)

Muscle tissues differ in their cell structure, body location, and how they are stimulated to contract

Some ways they are the same

1. Skeletal and smooth muscle are both elongated…these types of muscle cells are called muscle fibers.

2. The ability of muscle to shorten, or contract, depends on the types of myofilaments

3. Terminology: When you see prefixes
myo and mys (“muscle”) and sarco
(“flesh”), you will know that muscle is being referred to…for example, in muscle cells the cytoplasm is called sarcoplasm.

(refer to page 179)

Body Location:

Attached to bone, or for some facial muscles, to skin

Cell shape and appearance:

Single, very long, cylindrical, multinucleate cells with very obvious striations

Regulation of contraction:

Voluntary; via nervous system controls

Speed of contraction:

Slow to fast

Rhythmic contraction:

No

(refer to page 179)

Body Location:

Walls of the heart

Cell shape and appearance:

Branching chains of cells; uninucleate, striations; intercalated discs

Regulation of contraction:

Involuntary; the heart has a pacemaker; also nervous system controls; hormones

Speed of contraction:

Slow

Rhythmic contraction:

Yes

(refer to page 179 & 181)

Body Location:

Mostly in walls of hollow visceral organs (other than the heart) like the stomach, bladder, and respiratory passages

Cell shape and appearance:

Single, fusiform, uninucleate; no striations

Regulation of contraction:

Involuntary; nervous system controls; hormones, chemicals, stretch

Speed of contraction:

Very Slow

Rhythmic contraction:

Yes, in some


Muscle plays four important roles in the body:

1. Produces Movement

2. Maintains posture

3. Stabilizes joints

4. Generates heat

(heat is a by-product of muscle activity)


Every one of our 600-odd skeletal muscles is attached to bone, or to other connective tissue structures, at no less than 2 points.

One of these points, the origin, is attached to the immovable or less movable bone.

The insertion is attached to the movable bone, and when the muscle contracts, the insertion moves toward the origin.

Some muscles have interchangeable origins and insertions.

Generally speaking, body movement occurs when muscles contract across joints.

(refer to pages 194-195)

Flexion: Decreases angle of joint and brings bones closer together…typical of hinge joints (bending of knee/elbow or bending forward at hip)

Extension: Opposite of flexion...increases the angle between two bones or parts of body (straightening knee or elbow). If extension is greater than 180 degrees it is hyperextension….

Rotation: Movement of a bone around its longitudinal axis…common of ball and socket joints (shaking your head no)

Abduction: Moving a limb away from the midline, or median plane, of the body…term also applies to the fanning movement of the fingers or toes when they are spread apart.

Adduction: The opposite of abduction…movement of a limb toward the body midline.

Circumduction: Combination of flexion, extension, abduction, and adduction…commonly seen in ball and socket joints such as the shoulder….the limb as a whole outlines a cone.

Certain movements do not fit into any of the previous categories and only occur at a few joints.
(refer to pages 194-195)

Up and down movements of the foot at the ankle…lifting the foot so that its superior surface approaches the shin is called dorsiflexion and pointing the toes is called plantar flexion

Also have to do with the foot…to turn the sole medially is to invert and turning the sole laterally is called eversion.

Supination (“soup”) occurs when the forearm rotates laterally so that your palm faces anteriorly (the radius and ulna are parallel) and Pronation occurs when the forearm rotates medially and the palm faces posteriorly (brings the radius across the ulna so that the 2 bones form an
X).

In the palm of the hand, the saddle joint between metacarpal 1 and the carpals allows opposition of the thumb. This is the action by which you move your thumb to touch the tips of the other fingers on the same hand…makes the human hand very unique and very good at grasping and manipulating things!


Muscles can’t push…they can only pull as they contract…so most often body movements are the result of the activity of 2 or more muscles acting together or against each other.

Muscles are arrange in such a way that whatever one muscle
(or group of muscles) can do, other muscles can reverse…pretty neat.

Because of this, muscles are able to bring about an immense variety of movements!


Prime mover: the muscle that has major responsibility for causing a particular movement.

Antagonists: muscles that oppose or reverse a movement.

When a prime mover is active, its antagonist is stretched and relaxed. Antagonist can be prime movers in their own right…example…the biceps of the arm is antagonized by the triceps (but roles reverse in opposite movement!)

Synergists: “syn”=together “erg”=work…help prime movers by producing the same movement or by reducing undesirable movements.

When a muscle crosses 2 or more joints, its contraction will cause movement in all the joints crossed unless synergists are there to stabilize them…the finger-flexor muscles cross both the wrist and the finger joints…you can make a fist w/out bending your wrist because synergist muscles stabilize the wrist joints and allow the prime mover to act on the finger joints.

Fixators: specialized synergists.

They hold a bone still or stabilize the origin of a prime mover so that all the tension can be used to move the insertion bone. The postural muscles that stabilize the vertebral column are fixators.

Read page 214 to yourself (you may skip the Homeostatic
Imbalance portions…we will be discussing these as a class)

A group of inherited muscle-destroying diseases that affect specific muscle groups.
The muscles enlarge due to fat and connective tissue deposit, but the muscle fibers degenerate and atrophy (atrophy: decrease in size or wasting away of a body part or tissue)…most common and serious form is

Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy:

Expressed almost exclusively in males

Usually diagnosed between the ages of 2 & 6

Active, normal appearing children become clumsy and begin to fall frequently as their muscles weaken

The disease progresses from the extremities upward, finally affecting the head and chest muscles

Most victims must use wheelchairs by the age of 12 and generally do not live beyond young adulthood

Although the cause of muscular dystrophy has been pinned down (the diseased muscle fibers lack a protein: dystrophin that helps maintain the sarcolemma), a cure is still elusive….

1.
Cramps
2.
Fibromyalgia
3.
Fibrositis
4.
Fibrosis
5.
Denervation atrophy
6.
Muscular atrophy
7.
Spastic Paralysis
8.
Flaccid Paralysis
9.
Myasthenia gravis
10.
Dermatomyositis
11.
Compartment Syndrome
12.
Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva
13.
Rhabdomyolysis
14.
Chronic fatigue syndrome
15.
Polymyositis
16.
Myopathy
17.
Multiple sclerosis
18.
Muscle strain