Historical concepts on the relations between nerves and muscles

This review addresses the history since antiquity of studies on the anatomical and functional relations between nerves and muscles, and the progressive use of newer approaches to this topic. By the Hippocratic era (almost 2500 years ago) the digestive, circulatory and nervous systems were thought to participate in the production of animal spirits. This concept had strong support for nervous conduction, even after the dawn of electrophysiology in the late 18th C. The idea that these spirits explained the nature of the motor command to muscles continued to prevail until work in the mid-to-late 19th C dispelled the concept of “fluid/spirit” transmission by measurements of nerve “action currents” and conduction velocity. In parallel with this work, the functional relations between nerves and muscles were studied with the use of curare, which continued well into the 20th C. In the late 19th C the debate was formalized about whether transmission at the motor endplate was electrical or chemical, which continued as the “soup” vs. “sparks” battle until, surprisingly, the late 1960s. The concept of the motor unit was introduced in the 1920s, this being defined as a motor neuron in the spinal cord connecting to a specific set of muscle fibers. This development accelerated work on two-way trophic relations between nerve and muscles and their essential plasticity in response to the demands of usage and disease. Thus, the relation between nerves and muscles has been on the forefront of neuroscience since antiquity.This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Historical review.