Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To supply (an organ or a body part) with nerves.
  • transitive verb To stimulate (a nerve, muscle, or body part) to action.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To give nervous influence to; stimulate through nerves; innerve: as, the facial nerve innervates the muscles of expression.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb (Anat.) To supply with nerves.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To supply (part of the body) with nerves
  • verb To stimulate a nerve (or other part of the body) into action

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb supply nerves to (some organ or body part)
  • verb stimulate to action

Etymologies

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Examples

  • This latter extension contains the fibers that innervate the vestibular bulbs and clitoris.

    In Defense of the Hysterectomy aka TBTAM 2007

  • But what those research sites don't often say is that not only does it innervate the throat and chest, it is directly connected to the cervix and uterus.

    Suzie Heumann: What Do Singing, Throats And The Vagus Nerve Have To Do With Orgasm? 2009

  • The result is a stereotyped map of OR inputs in which signals derived from different ORs are segregated in different glomeruli and in the bulb projection neurons whose dendrites innervate those glomeruli.

    Linda B. Buck - Autobiography 2005

  • Picking up the red chalk, he drew the musculature of the shark and with the yellow chalk he drew the nerves that innervate those muscles.

    Egnorance: The Egotistical Combination of Ignorance and Arrogance - The Panda's Thumb 2007

  • And over a period of months or a year, or even longer, the nerves will have to re-grow and re-innervate those muscles.

    CNN Transcript Feb 6, 2006 2006

  • We may never reach the point where we can safely transplant exogenous stem cells into, say, the brain of someone with Parkinson's Disease and have them differentiate into new neurons which innervate the right target structures.

    xaxanprilokevlixec, 800 mg b.i.d. (orally) 2005

  • First of all, you are not going to be satisfied if you get a face put on that doesn't innervate, that doesn't work right.

    CNN Transcript Dec 2, 2005 2005

  • My studies in graduate school involved developing a better understanding of why and how neurons of the sympathetic nervous system innervate the heart and produce and release norepinephrine.

    Louis J. Ignarro - Autobiography 1999

  • John Garthwaite had just reported that nitric oxide was a neuro transmitter in the brain, and we wondered whether or not nitric oxide could be the neurotransmitter in the so called nonadrenergic noncholinergic neurons that were known to innervate the corpus cavernosum smooth muscle.

    Louis J. Ignarro - Autobiography 1999

  • Sperry showed that if nerve connections were rearranged - for example, by redirecting to the other side of the animal the sensory nerves that innervate the left foot of a rat - inappropriate responses resulted that could not be unlearned.

    Roger Wolcott Sperry 1997

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