Spasm Vs. Involuntary Movement

Hi All,

Just wondering if anyone has a good way of defining the difference between a muscle spasm and involuntary movement?

Cheers,
Ray

Are you referring to involuntary muscle spasms, twitching type spasm, tetanic type spasm, etc? If you can be slightly more specific then I would like to add comment.

I was mainly referring to tetanic type spasms but feel free to compare to any and all...

Ray

By definition spasm is involuntary muscle contraction of voluntary muscles manily the large muscle groups.

Have a good day there.

Spasm can be defined as involuntary rigid muscle contraction, often persistent and often accompanied by pain. It usually has some underlying physical cause such as disease, strain, or injury to the muscle or nearby tissues, impairment of circulation, or a disturbance of body chemistry.

The spasm may be confined to one group of muscles or it may be severe and fairly generalized, as in convulsions.

Painless localized spasms are called tics. These purposeless movements, usually of some part of the face, may begin as purposeful movement in response to some stimulus but eventually are carried out automatically, apparently without reason.

They may disappear spontaneously after a time, or may require the elimination of some physical or psychic cause.

myotonia - Tonic spasm or temporary rigidity of one or more muscles, often characteristic of various muscular disorders. Myotonia can be characterised by abnormally long muscular contractions; slow, often delayed relaxation of a muscle after an initial contraction.

Hope this helps somewhat :)

Hi Ray,

Dont mind me but I am going to go out on a limb here and throw out my text books to answer this. (I have a feeling you are looking to define the characteristic of the contraction that you see in terms of "cause" as opposed to symptoms)

To me it all comes down to who is communicating to whom and what is the message.

A spasm in my opinion is one of those crazy defensive mechanisms where the brain gets carried away when it applies a splint to a joint in order to prevent range of motion. The increased tone will decrease blood supply to the deeper portions of the muscle (which is due to pressure as opposed to capliary distribution) and create a painful cramp. The brain can splint a joint without spasming as long as the pain/spasm cycle is not initiated (as in the thaw stage for frozen shoulder).

An involuntary movement is a reflex only response where the brain is bypassed when initiating the movement. Here the spinal cord directs the contraction and not the brain to remove the muscle/body part from the stimulus.

They are both used to prevent injury to the body. The spasm prevents injury caused from within and the involuntary movement prevents injury caused from without.

Now we can go on into every exception to the above statements but what we see on a day to day basis with normal healthy adults can be put into one or the other category.

Adamo

Thanks all for the replies - that's certainly clarified a few things for me and given me a way to explain things without getting to complicated...

Cheers,
Ray

Hi,
well, the last definition of "involuntary movement" is not quite right. here's what "Clinical Neurology" by Dr. Frank A. Elliott has to say about involuntary movements: "involuntary movements fall into 7 classes: tremors, athetosis, choreioform movements, clonic spasms, tonic spasms, fasciculations and tics or habit spasms." The brain is certainly not bypassed in any of them, rather they are caused be lesions in different parts of the brain, eg. the corpus striatum, red nucleus, cerebellum, etc.
Spasms are defined as "involuntary, sudden movement or convulsive muscular contraction," and may involve skeletal muscle or visceral (smooth) muscle.
What we usually deal with is spasticity, an increase of tone in muscles due to upper motor neuron lesions.
We also see tremors: fast, rhythmic, alternating contractions of agonists and antagonists.
athetosis: "mobile spasm", consisting of slow, writhing contortions
choreiform movements: quick, jerky and irregular movements in a nonsequential and disorderly manner, without reference to segmental or cortical patterns of movement.
then there are, of course, reflexes.....
Sorry you aked?????????????
neving

hi there,

I'm assessing a guy with TBI. Can somebody help me differentiate rigidity, spasticity and hypertonicity?

Any replies is highly appreciated.

Thanks

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Physiobase

Spasm can be defined as involuntary rigid muscle contraction, often persistent and often accompanied by pain. It usually has some underlying physical cause such as disease, strain, or injury to the muscle or nearby tissues, impairment of circulation, or a disturbance of body chemistry.

The spasm may be confined to one group of muscles or it may be severe and fairly generalized, as in convulsions.

Painless localized spasms are called tics. These purposeless movements, usually of some part of the face, may begin as purposeful movement in response to some stimulus but eventually are carried out automatically, apparently without reason.

They may disappear spontaneously after a time, or may require the elimination of some physical or psychic cause.

myotonia - Tonic spasm or temporary rigidity of one or more muscles, often characteristic of various muscular disorders. Myotonia can be characterised by abnormally long muscular contractions; slow, often delayed relaxation of a muscle after an initial contraction.

Hope this helps somewhat :)

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They are both used to prevent injury to the body. The spasm prevents injury caused from within and the involuntary movement prevents injury caused from without.