Few of us think about muscle feeling and endow it with exceptional importance. Meanwhile, thanks to him, even closing his eyes, a person unmistakably feels in what position his arm is in spatial relation - is it bent or raised up, in what position is his body - is he sitting or standing. Such regulation of movements is determined by the work of special proprioceptors located in the muscles, articular bags, ligaments, and in the skin. Let's take a closer look at what muscle feeling is.
A special form of cognition
The complex of sensations that arise due to the functioning of the muscular system of the body is called a muscular feeling. This concept was introduced by I. M. Sechenov. The scientist argued that, for example, when a person walks, not only his sensations from the contact of the leg with the surface are important, but also the so-called muscle sensations that accompany the contraction of the corresponding organs.
Interpretation of the question of what is musclefeeling, I. M. Sechenov was given as a special form of human cognition of the spatio-temporal relations of his environment.
The scientist gave muscle feeling a special purpose in the regulation of movements. He assigned vision and vision the role of the closest regulators, thanks to which a person is able to compare objects, perform simple operations of analysis and synthesis.
"Dark" feeling
The muscular feeling of a person was called "dark" and for a rather long period they were not separated from touch, calling both concepts haptics. Thus, the psychologist William James emphasized the extreme uncertainty of this concept. Since it is not clear what we are talking about - about residual sensations from a posture or movement, or some kind of efferent impulses sent by the brain.
And indeed, in most cases, a person is not aware of the work of muscles, but only movement. The sensations experienced when moving, maintaining a certain posture, straining the vocal cords or gesticulating are almost not realized.
Kinesthesia
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the question of what muscle feeling is and how to define it was still on the agenda. Neurologist Henry-Charlton Bastian began to express this concept, or, as he wrote, “feelings of movement”, with the word “kinesthesia.”
Kinaesthesia was understood as the ability of the brain to be continuously aware of the movement and position of the muscles of the body and its various parts. This ability was achieved thanks to proprioreceptors, which send impulses to the brain.from joints, tendons, muscles.
The term has entered the scientific language quite firmly and even gave rise to several derivative concepts, such as kinesthetic empathy, kinesthetic pleasure, kinesthetic imagination, which means liberation from the usual and normative ways of moving and the ability to create new motor "events".
Proprioreceptors
How to understand what a muscle feeling is?
Awareness of the position and movement of the muscles of the body and its various parts is associated with the work of special proprioceptors - nerve endings located in the muscular-articular apparatus. Their excitation during muscle stretching or contraction is sent by impulses to receptors along nerve fibers in the central nervous system. This allows a person, without controlling his movements with his eyesight, to change the position of the body or posture, makes it possible to touch the tip of the nose with the exact movement of a finger.
Such signals are very important for body orientation in space. Without them, a person would not be able to perform any coordinated movement. Muscular feeling in the work of people in such professions as a surgeon, driver, violinist, pianist, draftsman, turner and many others plays an important role. Special regulating impulses give them the ability to make subtle and precise movements.
A person, being conscious, constantly feels the passive or active position of his body parts and the movement of the joints. They accurately determine the resistance to each of their movements. Similar abilitiestaken together, they are called proprioception, since the stimulation of the corresponding proprioceptors (receptors) does not come from the external environment, but from the body itself. Often they are called deep sensitivity. This is due to the fact that most of the receptors are located in extracutaneous structures: in muscles, joints and their capsules, tendons, ligaments, periosteum, fascia.
Muscular-articular feeling, thanks to proprioreceptors, allows a person to have a sense of the position of his body in space, as well as a sense of strength and movement. The first is practically not subject to adaptation and carries information about the angle at which a certain joint is currently located, and, accordingly, about the position of all limbs. The sense of movement allows you to realize the direction and speed of movement of the joints. At the same time, a person with muscle contraction equally perceives active and passive action. The threshold for perception of movements depends on their amplitude and on the rate of change in the angle of joint flexion.
Strength sense measures the muscle strength needed to move or hold joints in a certain position.
Meaning of muscle feeling
For a person, the muscular-articular feeling is of no small importance. It allows you to correctly find objects and determine the position of the body in space with your eyes closed. Muscular feeling helps to determine the mass and volume of objects, to make a fine analysis of movements, their coordination. Its value especially increases with a drop in vision or itsloss.
Violation of the muscular-articular feeling, dysfunction of the motor analyzer lead to the fact that a person loses the accuracy of movements. His gait becomes unsteady and unsteady, he loses his balance. In people with such disorders, when orienting in space, the function of the so-called nearest regulator is taken over by vision.
Muscular feeling in zero gravity
Muscular feeling in humans is absent in space flights. In the state of weightlessness, in which there is no force of interaction between the bodies and the support, the orientation of spatial relationships is perceived through visual perception and visual assessment.
The experience of orbital flights and access to unsupported space by astronauts showed that a person is able to adapt to such unusual conditions for him. Between the sense organs, he has other relationships. Tactile, muscular-articular sensations, vision acquire the main importance, a slightly lesser influence is attributed to signaling from the otolithic device. Such a functional system of analyzers is unstable.
In the future flights of astronauts and their further separation in unsupported space, the possibility of disorientation and spatial illusions is not ruled out. That is why the problem of human orientation in outer space is quite relevant.
