An allometric analysis of the number of muscle spindles in mammalian skeletal muscles

119Citations
Citations of this article
167Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

This article is free to access.

Abstract

An allometric analysis of the number of muscle spindles in relation to muscle mass in mammalian (mouse, rat, guinea-pig, cat, human) skeletal muscles is presented. It is shown that the trend to increasing number as muscle mass increases follows an isometric (length) relationship between species, whereas within a species, at least for the only essentially complete sample (human), the number of spindles scales, on average, with the square root rather than the cube root of muscle mass. An attempt is made to reconcile these apparently discrepant relationships. Use of the widely accepted spindle density (number of spindles g-1 of muscle) as a measure of relative abundance of spindles in different muscles is shown to be grossly misleading. It is replaced with the residuals of the linear regression of ln spindle number against ln muscle mass. Significant differences in relative spindle abundance as measured by residuals were found between regional groups of muscles: the greatest abundance is in axial muscles, including those concerned with head position, whereas the least is in muscles of the shoulder girdle. No differences were found between large and small muscles operating in parallel, or between antigravity and non-antigravity muscles. For proximal vs. distal muscles, spindles were significantly less abundant in the hand than the arm, but there was no difference between the foot and the leg. © 2006 The Author Journal compilation. © 2006 Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Banks, R. W. (2006). An allometric analysis of the number of muscle spindles in mammalian skeletal muscles. Journal of Anatomy, 208(6), 753–768. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7580.2006.00558.x

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free