Work

Extraction of Individual Muscle Mechanical Action From Endpoint Force

Year: 2010

Type: article

Abstract: Most motor tasks require the simultaneous coordination of multiple muscles. That coordination is poorly understood in part because there is no noninvasive means of isolating a single muscle's contribution to the resultant endpoint force. The contribution of a single motor unit to isometric tasks can, however, be characterized using the spike-triggered averaging (STA) technique, applied to a single motor unit's spike train. We propose that a technique analogous to STA, which we call electromyogram (EMG)-weighted averaging (EWA), can be applied to surface EMGs to extract muscle mechanical action from the natural endpoint force fluctuations generated during steady isometric contraction. We demonstrate this technique on simultaneous recordings of fingertip force and surface EMG from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and extensor indicis (EI) of humans. The EWA direction was approximately the same across a wide range of fingertip force directions, and the average EWA direction was consistent with mechanical action direction of these muscles estimated from cadaveric and imaging data: the EWA directions were 193 +/- 2 degrees for the FDI and 71 +/- 5 degrees for the EI (95% confidence). EWA transient behavior also appears to capture temporal characteristics of muscle force fluctuations with peak force time and general waveform shape similar to that of the associated spike-triggered averages from single motor units. The EWA may provide a means of empirically characterizing the complex transformation between muscle force and endpoint force without the need for invasive electrode recordings or complex anatomical measurements of musculoskeletal geometry.

Source: Journal of Neurophysiology

DOI: 10.1152/jn.00956.2009

Authors: Jason J. Kutch, Arthur D. Kuo, William Z. Rymer

Institutions: Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, University of Michigan

Language: English

Topic: Muscle activation and electromyography studies

Subfield: Biomedical Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development