PATHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Muscle spindles, the proprioceptors in the muscle, are long proteins that lay parallel to muscle fibers. Proprioception relies on the relationship between the body’s central nervous system and certain soft tissues, including muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Within these tissues are sensory organs called proprioceptors.

Detailed explanation-2: -Role in Proprioception Although Golgi tendon organs, joint receptors and other sensory systems also contribute to proprioception, muscle spindles are the most important proprioceptors. Muscle spindles are the most frequently found sense organs in skeletal muscles and present in almost every muscle.

Detailed explanation-3: -Muscle spindles are proprioceptors that consist of intrafusal muscle fibers enclosed in a sheath (spindle). They run parallel to the extrafusal muscle fibers and act as receptors that provide information on muscle length and the rate of change in muscle length.

Detailed explanation-4: -The term proprioceptor comes from the Latin ‘proprius’, one’s own, and ‘recipio’, to receive. It was defined by Sherrington (1906): ‘In muscular receptivity we see the body itself acting as a stimulus to its own receptors – the proprioceptors’.