The Motor Unit
The smallest functional unit to describe the neural control
of the muscular contraction process is called a Motor
Unit (Fig. 5). It is defined as “...the cell body and
dendrites of a motor neuron, the multiple branches of its
axon, and the muscle fibers that innervates it (5, p.
151). The term units outlines the behavior, that all muscle
fibers of a given motor unit act “as one” within the
innervation process.