Functions
The pleural cavity, with its associated pleurae, aids optimal functioning of the lungs during respiration. The pleural cavity also contains pleural fluid, which allows the pleurae to slide effortlessly against each other during ventilation. Surface tension of the pleural fluid also leads to close apposition of the lung surfaces with the chest wall. This relationship allows for greater inflation of the alveoli during respiration. The pleural cavity transmits movements of the chest wall to the lungs, particularly during heavy breathing. This occurs because the closely apposed chest wall transmits pressures to the visceral pleural surface and hence to the lung itself.
Read more about this topic: Pleural Cavity
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functions ... extends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. Here again is the mystery of generation repeated.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)