Functional Morphology of Primate Epaxial Muscles.

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The correlation between finction and morphology of the epaxial muscle were not enough investigated, because of its complex structure. However, the demand for the modification of the morphology and function in the epaxial structure would be needed to acquisit human erect bipedal habit. Thus the functional-morphological studies of the epaxial muscle of the primate, which includes human, would be the important research problem.We planned to study this problem by means of the three aspects which inluded the gross anatomical study, histological study and EMG analysis.We selected the terrestrial patas monkey and hamadryas baboon as the materials for the gross anatomical study, because head investigator have already accumulated arboreal species of the primates. The comparison between arboreal and terrestrial species revealed that the epaxial muscle structure in the thoraco-lumbar junction of the terrestrial species was more massive than those of arboreal species.We attempted to qualify the nu … More mber of the muscle spindles in the cervical epaxial muscles. Because the relative number of the muscle spidles would reflect the amount of the feed-back information, the muscle which have large number of spidles would act the sensor of the joint motion. After this correlation, the function of the deep muscle, whose EMG activity can not be tested easily, would be investigated.The results from the five species of the primates suggested that the interspecific variation existed in the relative number of the muscle spindle. Furthermore, this variation might correlated to the species-specific mode of locmotion.The muscular activity of the lumber erector spinae muscle of the Japanese macaque were investigated during postural and locomotor behavior. Although this muscle were not active during sitting or level quadrupedal walking, the bilateral sustaining activities were observed in bipedal standing and bipedal walking. These bilateral activity would extend to the thoraco-lumbar junction of the macaque and maintain these posture and locmotion. Less