The sensory region of muscle spindles in the posterior cricoarytenoid muscle of the marmoset.

We examined muscle spindles in the posterior cricoarytenoid (PCA) muscle of the marmoset. The spindle capsule contained only one intrafusal muscle fiber which did not form a typical aggregation of equatorial nuclei such as bags and chains. The intrafusal fiber was innervated by sensory endings which branched and arranged irregularly. These sensory endings lay on the surface of the fiber in shallow grooves or deeply penetrated into it. These findings suggest that the muscle spindles in the marmoset PCA muscle are strikingly different in the structure of intrafusal fibers in the arrangement of sensory endings from those in common mammalian skeletal muscles.