Slowly Adapting Muscle Receptors in Man

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Unitary nerve impulses originating from slowly adapting muscle receptors were recorded with percutaneously inserted tungsten electrodes from the median and the tibial nerves in awake human subjects. Discharges from 72 receptors located in the wrist flexor muscles and the ankle extensor muscles were analysed. The possibilities to derive criteria of muscle spindles and Golgi tendon organs were tested by means of a number of experimental procedures. A differentiation between these two types of receptors could, for technical reasons, not be achieved by electrically induced muscle twitches. For the majority of the endings muscle spindle characteristics could be demonstrated. In relaxed muscles, a number of the muscle spindle afferents exhibited a high dynamic sensitivity to passive joint movements whereas a smaller proportion of them had a low dynamic sensitivity. A steady state discharge as a function of the muscle length could be demonstrated for some of them. During weak voluntary contractions without external muscle shortening, the majority of the units responded with a sustained impulse discharge which started and stopped almost simultaneously with the onset and the cessation of the extrafusal contractions. It was concluded that the motor cortex exerts a very powerful control of the intrafusal muscle fibres of the majority of the muscle spindles. For a few units the relation between the muscle force and the impulse frequency was very striking but for the majority of them this relation was poor. It was concluded that the former units were Golgi tendon organs.</jats:p>