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Sliding filament theory: A sarcomere in relaxed (above) and contracted (below) positions. The sliding filament theory explains the mechanism of muscle contraction based on muscle proteins that slide past each other to generate movement. [1] According to the sliding filament theory, the myosin (thick filaments) of muscle fibers slide past the ...
Depiction of smooth muscle contraction. Muscle contraction is the activation of tension -generating sites within muscle cells. [1][2] In physiology, muscle contraction does not necessarily mean muscle shortening because muscle tension can be produced without changes in muscle length, such as when holding something heavy in the same position. [1 ...
Myogenic mechanism. The myogenic mechanism is how arteries and arterioles react to an increase or decrease of blood pressure to keep the blood flow constant within the blood vessel. Myogenic response refers to a contraction initiated by the myocyte itself instead of an outside occurrence or stimulus such as nerve innervation.
The stretch reflex (myotatic reflex), or more accurately "muscle stretch reflex", is a muscle contraction in response to stretching a muscle. The function of the reflex is generally thought to be maintaining the muscle at a constant length but the response is often coordinated across multiple muscles and even joints. [1]
Stress relaxation. In materials science, stress relaxation is the observed decrease in stress in response to strain generated in the structure. This is primarily due to keeping the structure in a strained condition for some finite interval of time hence causing some amount of plastic strain. This should not be confused with creep, which is a ...
Similarly, the higher the contraction velocity, the lower the tension in the muscle. This hyperbolic form has been found to fit the empirical constant only during isotonic contractions near resting length. [1] The muscle tension decreases as the shortening velocity increases. This feature has been attributed to two main causes.
Reciprocal inhibition describes the relaxation of muscles on one side of a joint to accommodate contraction on the other side. In some allied health disciplines, this is known as reflexive antagonism. The central nervous system sends a message to the agonist muscle to contract. The tension in the antagonist muscle is activated by impulses from ...
Since smooth muscle does not contain a troponin complex, as striated muscle does, this mechanism is the main pathway for regulating smooth muscle contraction. Reducing intracellular calcium concentration inactivates MLCK but does not stop smooth muscle contraction since the myosin light chain has been physically modified through phosphorylation ...