Properties of Skeletal Muscles

Properties of Skeletal Muscles

Skeletal muscle owes its ability to move the body to four fundamental physiological properties:

• Excitability (Irritability) — the ability to detect and respond to a stimulus, whether chemical (such as acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction) or electrical, by contracting.
• Contractility — the ability to actively shorten, which pulls on whatever structure the muscle is attached to and produces movement.
• Conductivity — a stimulus applied at one region of a muscle fibre spreads rapidly to all parts of that fibre, so the whole cell contracts together rather than only the stimulated spot.
• Elasticity (Distensibility) — the ability to stretch under load and then spring back to its original resting length once the muscle relaxes, rather than staying permanently deformed. …