MECHANICS BEHIND MUSCLE CONTRACTION
A motor unit refers to a cluster of muscle fibres that are triggered by a single motor neuron along with its axon terminals. The size of a motor unit can differ depending on the complexity of the movement that needs to be controlled.
For instance, muscles involved in delicate and precise movements have fewer muscle fibres in a motor unit, whereas muscles that do not require fine control may have several hundred muscle fibres in a motor unit. Each motor neuron innervates multiple muscle fibres, and the number of fibres innervated depends on the type of muscle. The muscle fibres in each motor unit overlap with other motor units in microbundles of 3 to 15 fibres; they are not clustered together, which allows separate motor units to contract in support of one another instead of entirely as individual segments.7.8
Source:
Rana Tanmoy (ed.). Principles of Veterinary Animal Physiology. CRC Press,2026. — 290 p.. 2026
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