Suppose we are standing or walking and we decide we want to run, how does our thinking finally turns into physical action of running? How does our neurons trigger muscular action ?
In: Biology
I’m not sure how much detail you actually wanted so I gave a more general answer in my other comment which was more fitting for the sub. The more specific answer involves a form of energy called ATP which is made by metabolisation of food and stored. Nerves are fired using ions, sodium/potassium/calcium/chloride, ions carry electrical charge (they are charged particles) which travel along a nerve, a nerve is a type of specialised cell and they are joined together, surrounding nerves in the human body is something called a myelin sheath, this speeds up how quickly those electrical signals can be passed around. When the electrical inpulse arrives at the muscle, myosin filaments use the energy from the ATP to ‘walk’ along the actin filiaments. There’s essentially a ‘cross-bridge’ (imagine your fingers pushed together facing each other so that your fingers intertwine) and the walking action of one over the other causes the sarcomeres to contract (like your fingers pushing together), a muscle is made up of many sarcomeres together, forming a myofibril and are arranged tubularly into something called a sarcolemma, and many sarcolemma make up a skeletal muscle – which are only able to contract and relax and are the type of muscles involved in movement.
Other types of muscles like the heart (smooth muscle) work differently to the striated muscle found in skeletal systems
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