A motor axon supplying a fast skeletal muscle fibre has an absolute refractory period of
PHYSICS · Multi-part · Fermi University Physics · Biophysics & Medical Physics · Bioelectricity, the senses and the physics of the body · Bioelectricity, the senses and the physics of the body
Forces, Machines and Signals, Ch Muscle, heart and the fields outside the body
Problem
A motor axon supplying a fast skeletal muscle fibre has an absolute refractory period of 1.0ms. The fibre it innervates produces a single twitch that rises and falls back to baseline in about 30ms.
((a)) Find the maximum rate at which the axon's own refractory period would allow it to fire action potentials.
((b)) Find the minimum stimulation frequency needed for successive twitches to fuse (the interval between stimuli no longer than the twitch duration).
((c)) State which of these two rates is actually the bottleneck for producing a fused tetanus, and name the physiological process responsible.