A person suffers nerve damage that prevents electrical impulses from reaching the skeletal muscles of one leg, yet the muscles themselves are perfectly healthy. Predict what will happen to movement in that leg and explain why, connecting the roles of the nervous tissue and muscle tissue in producing movement.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · 2026-06-26 01:01 · grounding rag
Model Answer
The person will lose all voluntary movement in that leg, even though the muscles are healthy.
This happens because nervous tissue and muscle tissue must work together to produce movement. The nervous tissue carries electrical impulses from the brain to the muscles. When an impulse reaches the muscle, special proteins in the muscle cells change their shape and arrangement, causing the muscle fibres to shorten — producing movement. Since nerve damage prevents impulses from reaching the skeletal muscles, the muscles never receive the signal to contract, so no movement occurs despite being perfectly healthy.
Source: Chapter 6, Section 6.1.4 — How does the Nervous Tissue cause Action?
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Explanation
- Examiners want you to link both tissues: nervous tissue transmits the impulse; muscle tissue executes the movement via protein shape-change. Mentioning only one earns partial marks.
- Use the textbook phrase "special proteins change shape and arrangement" — it shows precise recall.
- The key insight is that healthy muscles are useless without the nerve signal — state this clearly for full marks.
- Avoid over-explaining neuron structure; the question asks about the consequence of the damage and the roles of both tissues.