Until quite recently fascia was regarded as an inert and functionally inconsequential packing material. For centuries, highly varied, regionally specialised and ubiquitous connective tissue including fascia has been relegated to the bin. Biological models have been strongly influenced by recent developments in our understanding of fascia. Fascia provides a material basis for body-wide continuity and architectural unity. Fascia is radically transforming our conception of the organism and re-situating the organism within its architecture.
This shift towards the role of material continuity (e.g. fascia) is being mirrored in neuroanatomy. In neuroanatomy glial cells were once regarded as inert structural stuff surrounding grey and white mater. Glial cells have emerged as critical in modulating fluid flows, neurotransmitter recycling and nourishing neurones – this glymphatic flow supports the health and function of the central nervous system. Interestingly, this waste clearance system functions best during sleep.
In real bodies, muscles seldom connect to bone and exert force in a direct manner. Instead connections are distributed through fascial sheets to synergist and antagonist muscles which encompass boney elements. This arrangement means that movement and muscular function is realised through the distribution of force within a tensional network, which typically spans numerous related joints. To reiterate, muscular contraction is transmitted to an interconnected network of fascial sheets, consisting of bags and slings which convert muscular contractions into smooth movement.
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Movement is generated by the activation of synergistic assemblages of motor units. Indeed at a neurophysiological level the ‘brain knows nothing of muscle’, instead the brain maps patterns of activation which relate to movement.
It is now clear that fascia, and connective tissue, form the ‘living scaffold of the entire body’. This scaffold or matrix emerges early in embryogenesis and is instrumental in ‘connecting and shaping space’ – space in this context refers to the space created for specialised cells, tissues and organs.
The German embryologist Erich Blechschmidt referred to the undifferentiated matrix, from which connective tissue is derived, as an ‘organ of innerness’. He suggested that the role of connective tissue in embryogenesis is analogous to the role of blood – which is a ‘mediator, distributor and controller’.
Embryogenesis – the emergence of form in space
In the words of another insightful anatomist and embryologist, Jaap van der Wal:
‘the fascia could be described as a system of (mechanical) connecting and shaping space in which – perhaps – muscles (or muscle tissue) could be incorporated as organs (or tissue) specialised in dynamic connecting and shaping space (contraction and relaxation)’
A simpler definition of fascia: ‘the soft tissue components of the connective tissue system that permeates the human’. This compact definition has been expanded to incorporate the architecture of biotensegrity: ‘the fibrous collagenous tissues which are part of the body-wide tensional force transmission system’.
FEATURED IMAGE:
Unknown origin.