Search results for "ELECTROMYOGRAPHY"
showing 10 items of 672 documents
Muscular synergies during motor corrections: investigation of the latencies of muscle activities.
2010
To reduce the complexity of muscular control, a small number of muscular activations are combined to produce an infinity of movements. This concept of muscle synergies has been widely investigated, mainly by means of principal component analyses (PCA) in the case of unperturbed movements. However, reaching movements can be altered at any time if the target location is changed during their execution. In this case, PCA does not precisely measure the latencies of muscles activities. We develop here a simple method to investigate how a random target jump toward a single location induced motor corrections in the whole musculature by precisely determining the latencies of muscle activities during…
Oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy in a northern German family linked to chromosome 14q, and presenting carnitine deficiency
1997
We report the evaluation of oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy (OPMD) in a large northern German family, which can be traced back six generations and is unrelated to French-Canadian families. The symptoms in this family start at about 50 years of age and include dysphagia, bilateral ptosis, and in some cases a slowly progressive atrophy and weakness of other extraocular, facial or limb girdle muscles. The muscle biopsies showed the pathognomonic ultrastructural finding of characteristic intranuclear filaments. Linkage analysis confirmed that this family is also linked to chromosome 14q markers. Haplotype analysis revealed that a unique haplotype segregates with the disease which is differen…
Effects of emotional picture viewing on voluntary eye blinks
2014
Eyeblinks, whether reflexive or voluntary, play an important role in protecting our vision. When viewing pictures, reflexive eyeblinks are known to be modulated by the emotional state induced thereby. More specifically, the hedonic valence (unpleasantness-pleasantness) induced by the picture has been shown to have a linear relationship with the amplitude of a startle blink elicited during picture viewing. This effect has been attributed to congruence between an ongoing state and task demands: an unpleasant emotional state is assumed to bias our attention towards potentially harmful stimuli, such as startle tones. However, recent research suggests that the valence-specific modulation may not…
Enhancement of human cortico-motoneuronal excitability by the selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor reboxetine
2002
It has been proposed that norepinephrine plays a critical role in the modulation of cortical excitability, which in turn is thought to influence functional recovery from brain lesions. The purpose of the present experiments was to determine if it is possible to modulate cortical excitability with the selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor reboxetine in intact humans. Recruitment curve and intracortical facilitation, assessed by transcranial magnetic stimulation, were increased after oral intake of 8 and 4 mg reboxetine, in the absence of changes in motor threshold, intracortical inhibition, M-response, F-wave or H-reflex. These results demonstrate that reboxetine enhances cortical exci…
Motor recruitment during action observation: Effect of interindividual differences in action strategy
2020
Abstract Visual processing of other’s actions is supported by sensorimotor brain activations. Access to sensorimotor representations may, in principle, provide the top-down signal required to bias search and selection of critical visual features. For this to happen, it is necessary that a stable one-to-one mapping exists between observed kinematics and underlying motor commands. However, due to the inherent redundancy of the human musculoskeletal system, this is hardly the case for multijoint actions where everyone has his own moving style (individual motor signature—IMS). Here, we investigated the influence of subject’s IMS on subjects’ motor excitability during the observation of an actor…
Reduced reflex sensitivity persists several days after long-lasting stretch-shortening cycle exercise
1999
The mechanisms related to the acute and delayed secondary impairment of the stretch reflex function were investigated after long-lasting stretch-shortening cycle exercise. The results demonstrated a clear deterioration in muscle function immediately after fatigue, which was accompanied by a clear reduction in active and passive reflex sensitivity. For active and passive stretch reflexes, this reduction was biphasic ( P < 0.05 to P < 0.001). However, for the ratio of the electrically induced maximal Hoffmann reflex to the maximal mass compound action potential, only one significant reduction was seen immediately after fatigue (71.2%, P < 0.01). A similar significant ( P < 0.01) d…
Neural and mechanical responses of the triceps surae muscle group after 1 h of repeated fast passive stretches
2004
Experiments were carried out to examine interaction between mechanical changes of the muscletendon unit and reduced reflex sensitivity after repeated and prolonged passive muscle stretching (RPS). There is some evidence that this interaction might be relevant also during active stretch-shortening cycle type of fatigue tasks. The results demonstrated a clear deterioration of voluntarily and electrically induced muscle contractions after RPS. Maximal voluntary contraction (MVC), average electromyographic activities of the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles, and maximal twitch contraction decreased on average by 13.8, 10.4, 7.6, and 16.8%, respectively. In addition, there was a 14% lengthening …
The pterygoid reflex in man and its clinical application
1992
A technique for eliciting and recording the stretch reflex (R) of the medial pterygoid muscle (Pter) is described. The latency was 6.9 ± 0.43 ms in 23 healthy volunteers (mean age 23.7 years) showing a side-to-side difference of 0.29 ± 0.21 ms. The PterR latencies were little shorter and side-to-side difference little greater than of the masseter reflex. Observations in 5 selected patients with small brainstem lesions suggest that the neurons of the PterR afferents form a cluster within the caudal portion of the trigeminal mesencephalic nucleus. Testing the masseter and pterygoid reflexes provides a more precise localization of small ponto-mesencephalic lesions. © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, In…
Effects of different dropping intensities on fascicle and tendinous tissue behavior during stretch-shortening cycle exercise.
2003
This study examined whether the elasticity of the tendinous tissues plays an important role in human locomotion by improving the power output and efficiency of skeletal muscle. Ten subjects performed one-leg drop jumps (DJ) from different dropping heights with a constant rebound height. The fascicle length of the vastus lateralis muscle was measured by using real-time ultrasonography during DJ. In the braking phase of the DJ, fascicle lengthening decreased and the tendinous tissue lengthening increased with increased dropping intensity. In the subsequent push-off phase, the shortening of tendinous tissues increased with higher dropping intensity. The averaged electromyographic activities of…
Stretch-reflex mechanical response to varying types of previous muscle activities
2002
This study was designed to examine the effects of varying types of background muscle activity on the stretch-reflex mechanical response. A rapid stretch was applied to the calf muscles after an isometric (pre-ISO), shortening (pre-SHO) and lengthening contraction (pre-LEN) with several pre-contraction levels, respectively. The stretch perturbation was applied with the tibio-tarsal joint angle at 90 degrees. The ankle joint torque elicited by the stretch showed a first peak (non-reflex torque: NRT), a transient drop and a second peak (reflex torque: RT). The muscle activities before the stretch clearly influenced the stretch-reflex mechanical response. The NRT reached the largest peak with t…