Description

This course takes integrative approaches to exploring architecture, physiology and mechanics of vertebrate skeletal muscle as the main driver of movements in organisms including humans. Combining presentations and discussions of important publications with simple experiments and report-writing, the course hones a specialist-level understanding of how the organ structure is constructed, how cell-level phenomena govern contraction, how the nervous system controls muscle function, how muscle contractions are constrained by physics, and how muscle as an organ structure is able to mitigate those constraints. We will also build and use actuators inspired by muscle function.