LECTURE OUTLINE
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Muscle Receptors |
"Two way communication between individuals, or, stated differently, between their nervous systems, is entirely dependent on muscular contraction. This is so because although information concerning the external world is received and processed through our senses, the resulting percepts and mental (cognitive) activities remain entirely private within one's own consciousness. They remain so unless communicated to others by movement, whether through an infant's cry, a Gallic shrug, or an aggressive or submissive posture; whether through writing a poem, a philosophical work, or just graffiti; but above all through vocalization, whether simply as an approving grunt, or linguistically refined by articulation into speech or song; and for the deaf by hand signing. Even when disease has resulted in a major loss of muscle, as in motoneuron disease, communication remains possible providing that a single tiny muscle remains under conscious control, so that either its contractile force or associated electrical activity can be used in a prosthesis to control a typewriter, or to generate artificial speech. This is no better instanced than by the remarkable feat of communication by the mathematician Professor Stephen Hawking in explaining his reasoning about the origin and nature of the universe to the rest of us who dwell within it." - from Answers.com definition of a motor neuron