Search results for "Reaction Time"
showing 10 items of 522 documents
Reaction time and electromyographic activity during a sprint start.
1990
Eight male sprinters were filmed running three maximal starts over 3 m on a long force platform. The subjects were divided into two groups (n = 4) according to the leg on which the electromyograph (EMG) electrodes were fixed. When in the set position one group had electrodes on the front leg (FLG) and the other group on the rear leg (RLG). The EMG activities of the gastrocnemius caput laterale muscle (GA), vastus lateralis muscle (VL), biceps femoris caput longum muscle (BF), rectus femoris muscle (RF) and gluteus maximus muscle (GM) were recorded telemetrically using surface electrodes. Total reaction time (TRT) was defined as the time from the gun signal until a horizontal force was produ…
Visuospatial deficits in schizophrenia: central executive and memory subsystems impairments
2002
Object and spatial visual working memory are impaired in schizophrenic patients. It is not clear if the impairments reside in each memory subsystem alone or also in the central executive component that coordinates these processes. In order to elucidate which memory component is impaired, we developed a paradigm with single spatial and object working memory tasks and dual ones with two different delays (5 and 30 s). Fifteen schizophrenic patients and 14 control subjects performed these tests. Schizophrenic patients had a poorer performance compared to normal controls in all tasks and in all time delays. Both schizophrenics and controls performed significantly worse in the object task than in…
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…
The effect of lifelong exercise on psychomotor reaction time: a study of 38 pairs of male monozygotic twins
1998
Purpose: The aim was to study the effect of lifetime physical activity on psychomotor speed. Methods: Foot and dominant hand visual simple and choice psychomotor reaction times were studied among monozygotic twins (38 pairs) aged 35-69, discordant for lifetime exercise histories. Results: There was a trend that some components of psychomotor reaction time were faster for frequent than for occasional exercisers. but the findings were not consistent for the hand and feet. After controlling for occupational physical activity, only choice decision time for the hand (26 ms, P < 0.01) and choice reaction time for the contralateral foot (51 ms, P < 0.05) both remained 7% faster. There was no trend…
Reduced oscillatory gamma-band responses in unmedicated schizophrenic patients indicate impaired frontal network processing
2004
Abstract Objective Integration of sensory information by cortical network binding appears to be crucially involved in target detection. Studies in schizophrenia using functional and diffusion tensor neuroimaging, event-related potentials and EEG coherence indicate an impairment of cortical network coupling in this disorder. Previous electrophysiological investigations in animals and humans suggested that gamma activity (oscillations at around 40 Hz) is essential for cortical network binding. Studies in medicated schizophrenia provide evidence for a reduced gamma activity in the context of auditory stimulus processing. This is the first investigation of oscillatory activations in the gamma-b…
Estimation of the dimensionality of sleep-EEG data in schizophrenics
1993
Deterministic chaos could be regarded as a healthy flexibility of the human brain necessary for correct neuronal operations. Several investigations have demonstrated that in healthy subjects the dimensionality of REM sleep is much higher than that of slow wave sleep (SWS). We investigated the sleep-EEG of schizophrenic patients with methods from nonlinear system theory in order to estimate the dynamic properties of CNS. We hypothesized that schizophrenics would reveal alterations of their dynamic EEG features indicating impaired information processing. In 11 schizophrenic patients, the EEG's dimensionality during sleep stages II and REM was reduced. We suggest that such lower dimensional ch…
ErbB4 genotype predicts left frontotemporal structural connectivity in human brain.
2008
Diminished left frontotemporal connectivity is among the most frequently reported findings in schizophrenia and there is evidence that altered neuronal myelination may in part account for this deficit. Several investigations have suggested that variations of the genes that encode the Neuregulin 1 (NRG1)-ErbB4 receptor complex are associated with schizophrenia illness. As NRG1--ErbB4 has been implicated in neuronal myelination, we investigated with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) whether fractional anisotropy (FA)--a putative measure of neuronal myelination--is predicted by a risk haplotype of the ErbB4 gene. The effects of the ErbB4 genotype were investigated in healthy subjects (N=59; mean …
Differential pathophysiological mechanisms of reduced P300 amplitude in schizophrenia and depression: a single trial analysis
1997
In order to address basic mechanisms behind a reduced averaged P300 wave in schizophrenia and depression, 17 unmedicated schizophrenic and 11 unmedicated depressive subjects were tested in an 'oddball paradigm' against healthy controls matched for gender and age. The amplitude distributions of single trials' maximum positive deflections after stimulation (P300) for both target and nontarget stimuli were determined, which served as a basis for calculating the discrimination index d'. This index characterizes differences in the electrophysiological responses to target and nontarget stimuli of a subject being engaged in a discrimination task. As a main result d' was significantly lower for sch…
The effects of a startle on awareness of action
2003
The execution of a ballistic movement within a reaction time task paradigm is significantly speeded up when an unexpected startling auditory stimulus (SAS) is delivered together with the imperative signal. Using Libet's clock, we investigated whether acceleration involves also the subjective appraisal of the time of task execution. In trials containing the SAS, reaction time shortened to 68.7% of control values. However, subjective judgment of task execution remained a similar time with respect to the imperative signal as in control trials. The dissociation between task execution and its subjective perception indicates the existence of separate circuits for action execution and action aware…
Effects of effort and EMG levels on short-latency stretch reflex modulation after varying background muscle contractions.
2005
It is known that the short-latency stretch reflex (SLSR) is modulated by the background muscle activity when it is elicited at matched torque levels. This study was designed to examine the effects of muscle contraction types before a stretch perturbation on SLSR in the human soleus muscle (SOL) when SLSR was elicited at the same levels of effort and at matched electromyographic (EMG) activity levels. A mechanical stretch perturbation was applied to the calf muscles when the ankle joint reached a ninety degree tibio-tarsal joint angle after the muscles performed an isometric (pre-ISO), shortening (pre-SHO) and lengthening contraction (pre-LEN). Subjects were seated on an ankle ergometer chai…