Ultrastructural observations on muscle spindles in extraocular muscles of pig

Abstract

Human and some mammals such as the sheep, goat and domestic and wild pigs have more or less muscle spindles in the extrinsic eye muscles, especially the domestic pigs having abundant muscle spindles (Matsuyama, 1987). The muscle spindles play a large role in maintaining the stable visual posture of the eyeballs. To define the morphological properties of the muscle spindles relative to the eye movement, the ultrastructure of the spindles was investigated in 6 extraocular muscles of the pigs by electron microscopy. The muscle spindles in the pig extraocular muscles consist of 4 to 5 intrafusal muscle fibers, one of which is nuclear bag fiber and 3 to 4 are nuclear chain fibers. The outer capsule is thin, composing of few layers, and the inner capsule ramifying to enwrap the individual fiber, accompanied by the medullated and unmedullated nerve fibers and blood capillaries. The nuclear bag fiber, 14 micron in diameter, is innervated by the atypical annulospiral sensory terminals and the chain fiber by the typical annulospiral terminal packed with mitochondria and microvesicles. The intrafusal fibers are innervated by the flower-spray sensory terminals anchoring deeply into the sarcoplasma, having abundant neurotubules and few mitochondria. The gamma motor end-plates have a relatively smooth synaptic cleft with a width of 70 nm and synaptic boutons containing few synaptic vesicles, sometimes, revealing a shallow fold of postsynaptic sarcolemma and abundant synaptic vesicles. The alpha motor end-plates reveal a relatively smooth synaptic cleft with a width of 80 nm, sometimes with a rough postsynaptic infolding, and boutons containing few synaptic vesicles and small-sized mitochondria. The satellite cells are innervated by the sensory terminals in various ways. The muscle spindles in the pig extraocular muscles are found to be much simpler in structure than those in the other antigravity muscles of the body. Their ultrastructure seems to reflect the morphological adaptation relative to the eyebal movement.