Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UMR7102, Case 14, 7 quai Saint Bernard, 75005, Paris, France.
Brain Res. 2011 Aug 29;1409:3-22. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2011.06.009. Epub 2011 Jun 12.
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.
这篇综述追溯了自古以来神经与肌肉解剖和功能关系研究的历史，以及在这个主题上逐渐采用的新方法。早在希波克拉底时代（大约 2500 年前），人们就认为消化系统、循环系统和神经系统参与了动物精神的产生。即使在 18 世纪后期电生理学的曙光出现后，这种关于神经传导的强烈观念仍然存在。这种精神解释了肌肉运动指令本质的观点一直占主导地位，直到 19 世纪中后期的工作消除了通过测量神经“动作电流”和传导速度来解释“流体/精神”传输的概念。与此同时，人们使用箭毒研究神经和肌肉之间的功能关系，这种研究一直持续到 20 世纪。19 世纪后期，关于运动终板的传递是电的还是化学的，进行了正式的辩论，这场辩论一直持续到 20 世纪 60 年代末，也就是“汤”与“火花”之争。运动单位的概念是在 20 世纪 20 年代提出的，它被定义为脊髓中的运动神经元，连接到特定的一组肌肉纤维上。这一发展加速了神经和肌肉之间双向营养关系及其对使用和疾病需求的基本可塑性的研究。因此，自古代以来，神经与肌肉之间的关系一直处于神经科学的前沿。
