Skeletal Muscle Response to Electrical Stimulation

Abstract

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many seminal investigations into the basic properties of electricity were electrophysiological in nature and focused on neuromuscular phenomena. In Galvani’s commentary (1791), a frog nerve-muscle preparation was used to propose a theory of “animal electricity” in which muscle fibers were thought to store charge. Volta (1800) later demonstrated that the bimetallic electrodes used by Galvani were a source of electrical stimulation current rather than a pathway for discharge of animal electricity. In modern society, electrical stimulation of skeletal muscle may occur unintentionally as one possible effect of an accidental electric shock or intentionally in medical devices for artificially induced muscle exercise or control.