preview

Muscle Memory Essay

Satisfactory Essays

Facilitation occurs when postsynaptic potentials evoked by a stimulus are increased when that stimulus closely follows a pervious stimulus. Five stimulus pulses were given at decreasing interpulse intervals. The data for this experimenet displays that when the interpulse interval changes from 10msec to 8 msec, the number of pulses needed to reach the maximum MAP increases rather than the expexted outcome. This is most likely due to movement of the muscle in the chamber, causing the recordings to be reading different areas of the muscle. Different neuromuscular junctions in the muscle require different amounts of Ach in order for muscle action potentials to reach threshold.
The expectation is that when the interpulse interval decreases, the number of pulses needed to reach maximum MAP should decrease. A cause for this occurrence is residual Ca2+ left over in the pre-synaptic terminal from the previous action potential fired. When an Aα motor neuron reaches threshold it causes a depolarization that …show more content…

7). At the interpulse interval of 2 msec, the refractory period of the muscle action potential is being studied. The refractory period of muscle action potential is between 3 and 4 msec, whereas nerve action potentials have a refractory period that persists for roughly 1 msec. There are more ions crossing the muscle cell membrane so it takes longer to remove Na+ inactivation and reset Na+ channels and repolarize. The data for the 2 msec interpulse interval displays all five CAPs firing after each pulse and only three MAPs. The first CAP produces the first MAP shown, but the second CAP does not produce the next MAP. Because the interpulse interval is set to 2 msec, the muscle action potential is still its refractory period when the second CAP fires. Instead, the third CAP produces the second MAP, 4 seconds later, and the fifth CAP generates the third

Get Access