What is the difference between Cardiac and Skeletal Muscle?

These two muscles that can be found in the human body have some differences in them, which we are going to be drawing out in this article. One of the differences between them is that cardiac is not controlled voluntarily, while skeletal muscles are controlled by the somatic nervous system. The shapes of the cardiac muscles are recognized to be semi-spindle, while the skeletal muscles are found to be cylindrical. Also, in terms of their length, the skeletal muscles are longer than the cardiac muscles. The tendons attach the skeletal muscles to the bone, and they also contain myoblasts that form the muscles’ fiber. On the other hand, you can find the cardiac muscles in the heart’s myocardium. Two things connect the myocyte and the syncytium, which are the T-tubules and intercalated discs contained in the cardiac muscles. When compared to the cardiac muscles, the skeletal muscles are more tightly bound together.

Cardiac and skeletal muscles are known to be two different types of muscles that will come with different functions. When you say skeletal muscle, this is the type of muscle that will respond to different types of stimuli. From the name itself, you can already guess that cardiac muscles are involuntary muscles and can only be found in the heart. As you may know, the heart is a muscle and it has to move involuntarily to make sure that blood will be pumped in and out to various parts of the body.

The appearance of these muscles is also different from each other. Skeletal muscles will have striated and multinucleated cells. Cardiac muscles, on the other hand, will also be striated but will only come with one nucleus.