This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Charles E. Blevins, PhD

Arch Otolaryngol. 1968;87(3):249-254.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

PREVIOUS studies have shown that the stapedius muscle of several vertebrates including man is uniquely endowed with a rich neuromuscular substrate. This substrate is presumably required for the finely coordinated contractions exhibited by the muscle in effectively dampening the transmission of potentially damaging frequencies of sound across the middle ear. It is characterized by an exceedingly rich motor nerve supply, small motor unit sizes, and limited sensory innervation compared to other skeletal muscles.^1-6 These features of nerve-muscle relationships are now well established for middle ear muscles, but there are no observations concerning the effect of age, acoustic trauma, or pathological conditions on the number of nerve and muscle fibers or the ratio of nerve fibers to muscle fibers (ie, the size of the motor unit).

Constant bombardment by sound, susceptibility to infection or degenerative change, and normal aging processes are forces which continuously influence the efficiency of the middle . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Seattle

From the Department of Biological Structure, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, and the Department of Anatomy Baylor University College of Medicine, Houston.

Footnotes
Accepted for publication Nov 14, 1967.

Reprint requests to Department of Anatomy, Northwestern University School of Medicine, 303 E Chicago Ave, Chicago 60611.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?