Excitability and Circuits Flashcards
What is a motor unit?
• Motor unit- a motor neuron and the synchronous muscle fibres it innervates and exclusively controls
What are the two different types of motor units?
• There are different types of motor units:
o Fast- twitch motor units
o Slow-twitch motor units
Describe fast-twitch motor units
- Diameter
- Type of motor protein
- Muscle fibre amount
- Size of motor neurons
- Force amount
- Ability to sustain tetanic contractions
Specialised, large-diameter muscle fibres
Composed of fast type myosin
Contain many muscle fibres
Are controlled by big motor neurons
Can produce a lot of force in response to action potential
Cannot sustain prolonged tetanic contractions
What are two different types of fast-twitch motor units. Describe them.
Divided into 2 subcategories
• Fast-fatiguing type units
o Composed of muscle fibres using anaerobic metabolism
• Fatigue-resistant type units
o Composed of fibres using aerobic metabolism
Describe slow-twitch motor units
- Diameter
- Type of motor protein
- Muscle fibre amount
- Size of motor neurons
- Force amount
- Ability to sustain tetanic contractions
- Metabolism type
o Slow-twitch motor units Specialised slow-twitch muscle fibres Slow-type myosin Composed of few muscle fibres Controlled by small motor neurons Aerobic metabolism Lesser force in response to action potential Less tetanic contraction force Can sustain tetanic contraction for a long time
What can force production in the muscle be graded by?
• Force production in the muscle can be graded by population code and frequency code
What is population code?
o Population code- Each neuron has a distribution of responses over some set of inputs, and the responses of many neurons may be combined to determine some value about the inputs (relies on number of motor unit)
Define frequency code
o Frequency code- Frequency of impulse conveys information about varying intensity of signals
How does the frequency code influence muscle force? Describe the mechanism
• Muscle fibres translate increased frequency into increased force
o When only small force is needed, the weakest slow motor neurons are activated first
o If more force is required, the depolarising synaptic input increases and the same slow-twitch motor neurons fire at higher frequency, generating greater tetanic force
o If more force is needed, additional fast-type motor neurons ae activated by the synaptic drive
o Once activated, each motor unit increases its firing rate, as needed, to contribute to achieving the total force required for the task
o In principle, the higher the frequency, the greater the force produced by the motor unit (frequency code)
What does electromyography allow and what does it record?
• Electromyography (EMG)
o Allows for study of activation of muscle fibres by motor neurons
o Records the small extracellular electrical currents generated as the muscle action potential propagates from the Neuromuscular junction to end of each muscle fibre
What is the purpose of Compound Muscle Action Potentials?
• Compound muscle action potential (CMAPs)
o Purpose-
Examines population code during action
What are two types of EMGs?
- Compound muscle action potential (CMAPs)
* Single fibre EMG recording
How are CMAPs conducted?
o Process
Electrodes are attached to the skin surface directly over the muscle and the electrical potential difference between the two recording electrodes is recorded
CMAPs can be recorded in response to deliberate activation of the muscle in question by a subject
CMAPs can also be triggered artificially, by electrically stimulating the motor axons with a single impulse
Describe how CMAP results displayed and interpreted
o Result
CMAP is typically a complex waveform representing the summed electrical currents produced by all the active muscle fibres within the muscle
The area of each CMAP waveform can be used to compare the relative number of muscle fibres or motor units activated at any given time.
• The greater the area, the greater the number of active muscle fibres
What is the purpose of single fibre EMG recording
o Purpose-
To study the activity of individual motor units
To study frequency code and population code
What is the process of single fibre EMG recording?
o Process
Specialised concentric needle electrode is pushed into the muscle close enough to an individual muscle fibre so single fibre action potentials can be recorded
How are excitatory postsynaptic potentials produced?
• Production of EPSPs
o Many of the synapses on the motor neuron are glutamatergic, meaning that the bouton releases vesicle-loads of glutamate
o The quanta of glutamate bind and activate glutamate receptors on the postsynaptic membrane
o Many of the glutamate receptors are ligand-gated cation channels of the AMPA-type and the NMDA-type
o The opening of these ligand-gated cation channels results in depolarising inward currents of sodium and calcium in the motor neuron
o This produces excitatory postsynaptic potentials
How are excitatory postsynaptic potentials studied?
• Studying Excitatory PostSynaptic Potentials
o Microelectrode must be inserted through individual neuron membrane
o When electrode pierces the membrane it will record a negative resting Vm (membrane potential)
What are properties of EPSPs?
- Depolarisation time
- Amplitude in regards to action potentials
• Properties of EPSPs
o Each EPSP involves brief, graded depolarisation (about 15 msec)
o Amplitude of most EPSPs is not sufficient to reach the action potential threshold, except when summation occurs
What is summation
o Summation-when many excitatory glutamatergic synapses on a neuron are simultaneously active, the sum of their EPSPs can push the Vm above the threshold needed to trigger a train of action potentials
What is the relationship between membrane potential and action potential firing frequency?
The higher the Vm rises above threshold, the higher the action potential firing frequency
Describe what voluntary muscles are controlled by, how these controllers are organised and how they control the muscle
- Voluntary muscle controlled by a group of alpha motor neurons that constitute the motor neuron pool for that muscle
- The motor neurons that control a given muscle are organised into a column extending over several spinal segments
- Axons of motor neurons leave from spinal cord via several adjacent ventral spinal roots before coming together again in a common peripheral nerve that gives rise to the muscle nerve
Explain the size principle for motor unit recruitment and its underlying neurophysiological mechanism
• Slow twitch units are recruited first, followed by more powerful units until the task is achieved
o Large motor neurons (which control fast-twitch motor units) require more depolarising current to reach threshold than smaller motor neurons (which control slow-twitch motor units)
o This is because of the larger area of peripheral membrane allows more of the depolarising current to leak out through an increased number of leakage channels in larger cells
o Hence, during voluntary activation the increasing amount of depolarising postsynaptic current therefore tends to activate the small motor neurons first (those with higher input resistance), then the next largest…- This is called the size principle
The previously activated motor units stay activated- cumulative effect
What is the relationship between neuron size, input resistance and current needed to bring it to the threshold
• The smaller the neuron, the higher the input resistance and the less current needed to bring it to threshold