Search results for " Muscle"
showing 10 items of 1495 documents
Transcranial direct current stimulation improves isometric time to exhaustion of the knee extensors
2016
International audience; Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can increase cortical excitability of a targeted brain area, which may affect endurance exercise performance. However, optimal electrode placement for tDCS remains unclear. We tested the effect of two different tDCS electrode montages for improving exercise performance. Nine subjects underwent a control (CON), placebo (SHAM) and two different tDCS montage sessions in a randomized design. In one tDCS session, the anodal electrode was placed over the left motor cortex and the cathodal on contralateral forehead (HEAD), while for the other montage the anodal electrode was placed over the left motor cortex and cathodal electr…
Abnormalities of mitochondrial functioning can partly explain the metabolic disorders encountered in sarcopenic gastrocnemius.
2007
International audience; Aging triggers several abnormalities in muscle glycolytic fibers including increased proteolysis, reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and apoptosis. Since the mitochondria are the main site of substrate oxidation, ROS production and programmed cell death, we tried to know whether the cellular disorders encountered in sarcopenia are due to abnormal mitochondrial functioning. Gastrocnemius mitochondria were extracted from adult (6 months) and aged (21 months) male Wistar rats. Respiration parameters, opening of the permeability transition pore and ROS production, with either glutamate (amino acid metabolism) or pyruvate (glucose metabolism) as a respiration substr…
Recovery of Damaged Skeletal Muscle in mdx Mice through Low-intensity Endurance Exercise
2013
The lack of dystrophin in mdx mice leads to cycles of muscle degeneration and regeneration processes. Various strategies have been proposed in order to reduce the muscle-wasting component of muscular dystrophy, including implementation of an exercise programme. The aim of this study was to examine how low-intensity endurance exercise affects the degeneration-regeneration process in dystrophic muscle of male mdx mice. Mice were subjected to low-intensity endurance exercise by running on a motorized Rota-Rod for 5 days/week for 6 weeks. Histomorphological analysis showed a signifi cant reduction of measured inflammatory-necrotic areas in both gastrocnemius and quadriceps muscle of exercised m…
Effects and underlying mechanisms of unstable shoes on chronic low back pain : a randomized controlled trial
2018
Este artículo se encuentra disponible en la página web de la revista en la siguiente URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269215517753972?rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed&url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&journalCode=crea Este es el postprint del siguiente artículo: Lisón, JF., Ortega-Santana, B., Antón-Nogués, Á., González-Requena, P., Vera-Hervás, C., Doménech-Fernández, J. et al. (2018). Effects and underlying mechanisms of unstable shoes on chronic low back pain : a randomized controlled trial. Clinical Rehabilitationol. 32, n. 5 (may), pp. 654-662, que se ha publicado de forma definitiva en https://doi.org/10.1177/0269215517753972 This is the pre-peer reviewed ve…
Repeatability and sensitivity of passive mechanical stiffness measurements in the triceps surae muscle‐tendon complex
2021
Measurements of muscle-tendon unit passive mechanical properties are often used to illustrate acute and chronic responses to a training stimulus. The purpose of this study was to quantify the inter-session repeatability of triceps surae passive stiffness measurements in athletic and non-athletic populations, with the view to discussing its usefulness both as a muscle-tendon profiling tool and a control measure for studies with multiple data collection sessions. The study also aimed to observe the effects of quiet standing on passive stiffness parameters. Twenty-nine men (10 cyclists, nine triathletes, 10 controls) visited the laboratory on three separate occasions, where passive stiffness t…
The effects of skin and core tissue cooling on oxygenation of the vastus lateralis muscle during walking and running
2016
Skin and core tissue cooling modulates skeletal muscle oxygenation at rest. Whether tissue cooling also influences the skeletal muscle deoxygenation response during exercise is unclear. We evaluated the effects of skin and core tissue cooling on skeletal muscle blood volume and deoxygenation during sustained walking and running. Eleven male participants walked or ran six times on a treadmill for 60 min in ambient temperatures of 22°C (Neutral), 0°C for skin cooling (Cold 1), and at 0°C following a core and skin cooling protocol (Cold 2). Difference between oxy/deoxygenated haemoglobin ([diffHb]: deoxygenation index) and total haemoglobin content ([tHb]: total blood volume) in the vastus lat…
Microfluidic Preparation of Liquid Crystalline Elastomer Actuators
2018
This paper focuses on the microfluidic process (and its parameters) to prepare actuating particles from liquid crystalline elastomers. The preparation usually consists in the formation of droplets containing low molar mass liquid crystals at elevated temperatures. Subsequently, these particle precursors are oriented in the flow field of the capillary and solidified by a crosslinking polymerization, which produces the final actuating particles. The optimization of the process is necessary to obtain the actuating particles and the proper variation of the process parameters (temperature and flow rate) and allows variations of size and shape (from oblate to strongly prolate morphologies) as wel…
Microfluidic synthesis of micrometer-sized photoresponsive actuators based on liquid crystalline elastomers
2016
The fabrication of photoresponsive micrometer-sized liquid crystalline elastomer (LCE) particles has been described in this article for the first time. The preparation of the LCE particles using a microfluidic device by a continuous “on the fly” technique allows their fast processing with an irradiation time of less than 2 seconds. In order to accelerate the polymerization and to make the preparation of samples with thicknesses of several hundred microns possible, we modified a NIR-photoinitiation system by adding a bleaching agent. In addition to the photoinitiator, a side-chain liquid crystalline monomer containing an azo-group and a LC-crosslinker were used in the polymerization mixture.…
Dynamical behaviour of pneumatic artificial muscles
2014
The mechanical response of pneumatic artificial muscles is analyzed in transient and periodic conditions, assuming the inextensibility of the sheathing fibres and considering the influence of the texture geometry, of the dissipation due to the mutual sliding between the braids and of the stress field inside the bladder thickness, where the constituent elastomer is regarded as a two-parameter Mooney–Rivlin material. The polytropic exponent of the thermodynamic air evolution inside the muscle during the charging and discharging phases may be properly chosen depending on the working frequency. The muscle end shape is taken into account profiling the meridian section by a simple m-degree parabo…
Smart artificial muscle actuators: Liquid crystal elastomers with integrated temperature feedback
2015
Abstract We present a smart, thermally stimulated liquid crystal elastomer actuator with an integrated heater and temperature sensor based on deformable polyimide wiring technology. Due to optimal thermal contact to the active material, heating from room temperature to the point of maximum contraction takes only 19.6 s; cooling requires only 5.6 s. The integrated temperature sensor allows closed-loop operation and characterize the thermomechanical properties of the material: open-loop positioning precision was found to be better than 45 μm and no inherent drift or hysteresis were observed. The maximum force generated by the actuator was 133 mN, corresponding to 76 kPa of stress. This ultra-…