The brain acts as the command center of the body, continuously analyzing sensory input and modifying motor output to allow the body to respond appropriately to the everchanging external world. The focus of this paper is to discuss how muscles work together and the impact the nervous system has on the muscular system. Additionally, you will examine how a stroke affects these organ systems.
Pick a region of the body (e.g., pectoral girdle, hand, neck, thigh, etc.) and prepare a written paper of at least 1000 words on the following bullet points:
- Describe the type(s) of muscle, patterns of fascicle organization, actions, and attachment points for the muscles present in your chosen region.
- Trace the pathways by which the presence of a sensory stimulus (e.g., a bug crawling across your skin) in your chosen region is processed and the subsequent motor behavior that carried out. Be sure to identify the initiation and termination points of the tracts, where the cell bodies of the neurons present in the pathway are located, along with locations of any synapses that occur along the tract.
- Focusing on one specific movement performed by muscles in your chosen region, identify the prime mover, synergists, and antagonists.
- Predict how a stroke in the primary somatosensory cortex would affect both the anatomy and function of your chosen region differently than a stroke in the primary motor cortex.
Your paper should be formatted as a proper research paper with an introduction and conclusion. Do not simply follow the bullet points above, but really think about what you have learned and how that relates to other material we have covered, and knowledge you have from other courses you may have taken. The Research and Report assignments in this course are capstone assignments for each module. You should be integrating everything that you learned in the textbook, explorations, discussions, and lab activities into your papers. All referances must be cited using APA style format.