Answer: Muscle contraction occurs when the thin actin and thick myosin filaments slide past each other. It is generally assumed that this process is driven by cross-bridges which extend from the myosin filaments and cyclically interact with the actin filaments as ATP is hydrolysed.
Explanation: and this is what happens: The sliding of protein filaments is responsible for muscle contraction. When a motor neuron stimulates a muscle fiber, overlapping thick and thin filaments slide along one another and sarcomeres shorten. The combined shortening of many sarcomeres in many muscle fibers results in contraction of the whole muscle.