Achilles Tendon Report

Achilles’ Tendon is the name of a bone in the back of the human leg, and its name comes from the only part of Achilles’ body that was a weak spot.

Our body consists of many tendons that attach bone to muscle. These tendons may become overused overtime causing inflammation or irritation. When tendons become inflamed or irritated it can be very painful. This type of injury is known as tendonitis.

The neuromuscular junction is where the nerve meets our muscles. To be able to move, we would need an impulse sent from our brain to our muscles. The nerve impulse gets sent to our muscles from the CNS, which leads to our muscles contracting. The nervous impulse that’s sent to the CNS is called the action potential, the impulse that sends a signal to our muscles is known as the motor neurones. For our muscles to contract we need a nervous impulse, the end of our nerves are called the synaptic knob, this hits the vesicles and releases acetylcholine. The acetylcholine then goes through the cleft (the gap between the synaptic knob and the muscle) and tells the muscles to contract, if it doesn’t go through the cleft our muscles will not contract, this is

When a patient experiences Achilles tendinopathy what typically tends to occur is that the tendon starts to get thick, becomes uneven and gets a brownish looking color. Upon examination of the tissue, it shows that there are no macrophages (a large cell that forms as a white blood cell, seen during the times of infections), no neutrophils (stained white blood cells) or even other inflammatory cells. So what actually happens? Tenocytes are cells that make up a strong tendon. The tenocytes happen to have an irregular shape and a higher chance of dying. (Li & Hua, 2016, pg. 2). When the Achilles tendinopathy is chronic, there are major changes that occur within the collagen fibers. In the article by Li and Hua they state that the changes that

Skeletal muscles have lots of function in human body. It consists of muscle tissue, connective tissue, blood vessels and nerves. Skeletal muscles produce skeletal movement by attaching to bones through tendon. Tendons are dense regular connective tissue whose strong collagen fibers firmly attach muscles to bones. In addition, sustains position and body posture, adjust body temperature and serving as

There are many steps involved in muscle contraction. The first being where the action potential starts in the brain and travels to the muscle where it meets at the neuromuscular junction. This is where a chemical synapse is formed. The motor neuron from the brain connects with the muscle fiber. Acetylcholine is a chemical neurotransmitter used at the neuromuscular junction that the motor neurons of the nervous system release in order to activate muscles causing contraction. There are diseases that wreak havoc on the connection at the neuromuscular junction; tetanus, botulism, and myasthenia gravis.

The skeletal muscles supplies us movement, which is supported by the posture. Our muscles will shorten, tighten, contract, and promote mobility. The muscles join with bones that attach to the tendons. Once the muscles begin contracting, the muscles are stimulated and join the fibers through our motor neuron cells. The nerves makeup axon, body of cells, dendrites, etc, and these elements transmit impulses to the nerves, sending the impulses to the major components of our system, such as Central Nerve System. The network joins with cells, fibers, muscles, etc, and conveys messages, transmitting them through sensations that stop at the brain. The brain transmits signals that are sent from motor impulses and carries onto

Neuromuscular junction (NMJ) is the functional contact (synapse) between an axon of motor neuron and its all enveloped muscle fibers, where chemical transmission of electrical signal from motor neuron to muscle fiber occurs, ultimately causing the muscle to contract. In based on extensive data that is received from numerous studies, varying synaptically active molecules are released in the neuromuscular synapse(). With regard to the heterogeneity of skeletal muscle in the fiber types, it is enables to fulfill different types of function. These various functions are controlled by motor units and signaling pathways(). In recent years, the importance of different exercise and exercise training has been interested by investigators in the morphological,

In order to effectively study the mechanics of the frog muscle contraction, it is important to understand the physiology of that particular muscle. The gastrocnemius muscle of the frog is attached to the heel bone by the Achilles tendon and runs up the tibiofibular bone to the knee. The calf muscle is an example of a muscle tissue type known as skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle is capable of contracting because of the proteins actin and myosin binding together, pulling the muscle. This process begins with the body receiving a stimulus. That stimulus is transferred into action potentials that travel to the muscle via the motor neuron attached to the muscle fiber. These action potentials initiate the release of Calcium in the axon terminal of

is the back portion muscle of the lower leg. The muscle group’s structure consists of two main muscles (Gastrocnemius and Soleus).

For this experiment, different aspects of the nervous system and skeletal neuromuscular system were analyzed. The nervous system is important when it comes to senses and this connects to the afferent and efferent systems and integrating centers (Sherwood, 2010). Afferent systems are responsible for collecting sensory information and relaying it to the integrating center where the efferent neurons then send a response back to the muscles (Sherwood, 2010). This is important and was focused on in many of these labs. Another important aspect of this lab was the spinal cord reflex arcs. The main function of this mechanism is again related to the body sensing a sensation and the spinal cord receiving the information and sending out a response. (Stevens, 1960) The spinal cord is in charge of responding to the different information that the body senses. If this was not such, the body would not be able to feel sensations. This can be seen when there is damage to the spinal cord. If there is any damage then the information “felt” below the damage would not be sensed (Sherwood, 2010). These experiments were done in order to connect the functions of the nervous system to their effect on the muscles coordinating movements and actions. There were four separate hypotheses that needed to be tested for this lab report. First, body parts that are primarily used for touch will have a lower two-point threshold than parts that are not primarily used for touch. Second, stimulation will cause a

Skeletal muscles are muscles that are attached to the skeleton. They are under voluntary control via the somatic nervous system. In skeletal muscles once the action potential travels to the T tubule, it causes Ca2+ channels to open. This triggers the release of Ca2+ from the terminal cisternae of the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Ca2+ then binds to troponin, this causes tropomyosin to move aside exposing the actin binding sites. This allow for myosin and actin to bind. Smooth muscle is found in the walls of blood vessels, airways and the gut. Smooth muscle also does not have striated fibers like cardiac and skeletal muscle. In smooth muscle once there is enough calcium it will bind to a protein called calmodulin and then bind to the myosin light

The difference in factors between stimuli are that visual stimulants are processed in a far more complex manner that takes time; auditory stimulants are processed quickly as their distance is proximate to the cortex; and cutaneous stimulants are processed with a lower level of complexity and number of synapses that can vary in their reaction time depending on their proximity to the cortex. These differences exist because of the different types of somatic senses, and the need of the spinal cord and brain to discern different impulses such as heat or sharp pain than they would need to discern an itch or dull pain. Muscle spindle fibers are sensory receptors that are found within the extrafusal fibers, and they transmit information about muscle stretch to the central nervous system (CNS). The stretch reflex pathway is monosynaptic and stimulates a muscle spindle to excite intrafusal fibers, 1a afferent sensory neurons to generate an action potential that travels to the spinal cord and synapses with an extrafusal motor neuron and triggers a contraction in the desired muscle. Two possible ways that the Jendrassik maneuver could alter this pathway are reducing the inhibition of alpha moroneurons, and the activation of gamma motor neurons as the responds to the change in activity of the 1a fibers. Psssmore, et. al (2012), also observed a reduced inhibition of the 1a afferent fibers with the use of the Jendrassik maneuver, and concluded that this inhibition was due the physical and not mental aspect of the maneuver. These possibilities affect the pathway and the ability of the neurons to fire an action potential by averting the subject

Acute Sinusitis occurs when there is an inflammation or bacterial infections in the paranasal sinuses. The patient above is deemed to suffer from the infection, since the disease’s symptoms are considered to appear in less than four weeks. Such symptoms further tend to be fever fluctuations, breathing difficulties, and joint pains. Specifically, the symptoms of the disease appear between ten days and the fourth week after contraction. For the patient’s case, she states that she experienced the symptoms in a span of two weeks, which ensued after contraction of a sore throat and high fever some months back.

The axon transmits a chemical signal through a neurotransmitter, then the synapse which is located between the nerve and muscle cell called a neuromuscular junction. When released it connects with a receptor protein called the motor end plate which allows the muscles to move.