motor
Meaning of motor: As a medical descriptor, motor relates to muscle movement or to the nerves and brain regions directing it, as in motor neuron or motor cortex.
Definition of motor
Motor is a descriptive term relating to movement of the body, particularly the muscles and the nerves that control them. It appears throughout medical vocabulary paired with another word, such as motor neuron, motor cortex, or motor function, each referring to some aspect of how movement is generated or carried out.
A motor neuron, for example, is a nerve cell that carries signals from the brain or spinal cord to a muscle, prompting it to contract, while the motor cortex is the region of the brain that plans and initiates voluntary movement. Motor function broadly describes a person's ability to move muscles under voluntary control, including strength, coordination, and range of motion.
Motor is generally paired with sensory as one of two broad categories of nervous system function, sensory describing the detection and transmission of information from the body and environment, and motor describing the outgoing signals that produce movement in response.
Used in a sentence
The neurological examination assessed both motor strength and sensory function in the affected limb.
Good to know
Motor and sensory function are often affected together by the same injury or disease, but they describe distinct functions, and a change confined to one without the other points toward a different underlying pattern of damage than a change affecting both.
Word origin
Where “motor” comes from
Formed from Latin motor, meaning one that moves, from movere, meaning to move.