The response of de‐efferented muscle spindle receptors to stretching at different velocities

It has long been known that when a muscle is stretched from one length to another its muscle spindle endings discharge more rapidly during the dynamic phase of stretching than they do subsequently at the new length (Matthews, 1933; Granit & Homma, 1959). More recently it has been shown under a variety of conditions that the primary endings, supplied by Group I afferents, are appreciably more sensitive to such dynamic stimuli than are the secondary endings, supplied by Group II afferents (Appelberg, 1962; Bessou & Laporte, 1962; Cooper, 1959, 1961; Harvey & Matthews, 1961; Jansen & Matthews, 1962a; Lundberg & Winsbury, 1960). Together these experiments provide a fairly comprehensive picture of the differences between primary and secondary endings, but in any one set of these experiments the effects of only a comparatively limited range of velocities of stretching were investigated, and the experiments also differed in the muscle used and as to whether or not the fusimotor nerve fibres were active. The present experiments were performed to compare the responses of the primary and secondary endings of de-efferented muscle spindles of a single muscle to a wide range of velocities of stretching.

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