ArticleJournal of anatomy2006
An allometric analysis of the number of muscle spindles in mammalian skeletal muscles.
Article in Journal of anatomy, 2006. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 78 papers.
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Who cites it
78 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effect of gaze direction recognition task on pain, rom and functional activities in cervicogenic headache patients.BMC neurology · 2025Trial
- Passive ankle exoskeleton assistance selectively modulates triceps surae neural control during balance.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2026Article
- Histomorphological Effects of Repeated Administration of the TRPA1 Antagonist HC-030031 on Intrafusal and Extrafusal Muscle Fibers in Healthy Young Rats.Muscles (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Intra-Rater, Inter-Rater, and Test-Retest Reliability of a Laser- and Inclinometer-Based Hip Joint Position Sense Test in Healthy Adults: A Two-Phase Study with Preliminary Reference Values.Muscles (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Aging increases visual dependency and disrupts sensory strategies in upright standing.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Optimal target localization for botulinum toxin A in treating splenius muscles dystonia based on the distribution of intramuscular nerves and spindles.Anatomical science international · 2026Article
- Muscle activation and intermuscular coordination adaptations to early strength training during maximal force production.PloS one · 2026Article
- Review
- Deep-learning models of the ascending proprioceptive pathway are subject to illusions.Experimental physiology · 2025Article
- The evolution of muscle spindles.Experimental physiology · 2025Review
- Left neck and right biceps muscle vibrations have similar effects on perceived body orientation.Experimental brain research · 2025Article
- Periarticular Proprioception: Analyzing the Three-Dimensional Structure of Corpuscular Mechanosensors in the Dorsal Part of the Scapholunate Ligament.Cells, tissues, organs · 2025Article
- Role of forelimb morphology in muscle sensorimotor functions during locomotion in the cat.The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
- Current and future advances in practice: cervical spondylosis and mechanical neck pain.Rheumatology advances in practice · 2025Review
- The functional role of the rabbit digastric muscle during mastication.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Voluntary co-contraction of ankle muscles alters motor unit discharge characteristics and reduces estimates of persistent inward currents.The Journal of physiology · 2024Article
- Localisation of the centre of the highest region of muscle spindle abundance of anterior forearm muscles.Journal of anatomy · 2024Article
- Voluntary co-contraction of ankle muscles alters motor unit discharge characteristics and reduces estimates of persistent inward currents.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Division of neuromuscular compartments and localization of the center of the highest region of muscle spindles abundance in deep cervical muscles based on Sihler's staining.Frontiers in neuroanatomy · 2024Article
- Comparison of head posture and neck proprioceptive sense of individuals with chronic neck pain and healthy controls: A cross-sectional study.Journal of back and musculoskeletal rehabilitation · 2024Article
18 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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1 author.
Funding
Abstract
An allometric analysis of the number of muscle spindles in relation to muscle mass in mammalian (mouse, rat, guinea-pig, cat, human) skeletal muscles is presented. It is shown that the trend to increasing number as muscle mass increases follows an isometric (length) relationship between species, whereas within a species, at least for the only essentially complete sample (human), the number of spindles scales, on average, with the square root rather than the cube root of muscle mass. An attempt is made to reconcile these apparently discrepant relationships. Use of the widely accepted spindle density (number of spindles g(-1) of muscle) as a measure of relative abundance of spindles in different muscles is shown to be grossly misleading. It is replaced with the residuals of the linear regression of ln spindle number against ln muscle mass. Significant differences in relative spindle abundance as measured by residuals were found between regional groups of muscles: the greatest abundance is in axial muscles, including those concerned with head position, whereas the least is in muscles of the shoulder girdle. No differences were found between large and small muscles operating in parallel, or between antigravity and non-antigravity muscles. For proximal vs. distal muscles, spindles were significantly less abundant in the hand than the arm, but there was no difference between the foot and the leg.
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