OBJECTIVE To examine the effects of experimentally induced pain and fear of pain on trunk coordination and erector spinae EMG activity during gait. DESIGN In 12 healthy subjects, hypertonic saline (acute pain) and isotonic saline (fear of pain) were injected into erector spinae muscle, and unpredictable electric shocks (fear of impending pain) were presented during treadmill walking at differ...

STUDY DESIGN Cross-sectional design. OBJECTIVE To compare lumbar multifidus electromyographic activity (EMG) during predictable and unpredictable trunk loading between people with and without recurrent unilateral low back pain (LBP) during symptom remission. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Unpredictable loading is a common injury mechanism for LBP. Paraspinal muscle responses to trunk loading di...

Objective To evaluate the value of free-run electromyography (f-EMG) monitoring of extraocular cranial nerves (EOCN) III, IV, and VI during expanded endonasal surgery (EES) of the skull base in reducing iatrogenic cranial nerve (CN) deficits. Design We retrospectively identified 200 patients out of 990 who had at least one EOCN monitored during EES. We further separated patients into groups acc...

OBJECTIVE To study the activity of the human uterine cervix at the onset of labour and further characterise cervical asynchronous electromyographic (EMG) activity in the latent phase. DESIGN Prospective observational study. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Clinical hospital in Ljubljana. PARTICIPANTS Forty-seven healthy nulliparous women with relatively unripe cervices requiring induction of labo...

Fingertip force control requires fine coordination of multiple hand muscles within and across the digits. While the modulation of neural drive to hand muscles as a function of force has been extensively studied, much less is known about the effects of fatigue on the coordination of simultaneously active hand muscles. We asked eight subjects to perform a fatiguing contraction by gripping a manip...

The extensor digitorum communis (ED) is a slender muscle group in the dorsal forearm from which tendons arise to the index (D2), medius (D3), ring (D4), and little (D5) fingers. Limited independence has been attributed to the parts that actuate the individual fingers. However, in a detailed anatomical analysis, it was found that the ED parts to the different fingers have constant and widely spa...

The aim of the present study was to use the diaphragm electromyogram (EMG(di)) to compare levels of neural respiratory drive (NRD) in a cohort of healthy subjects and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients, and to investigate the relationship between NRD and pulmonary function in COPD. EMG(di) was recorded at rest and normalised to peak EMG(di) recorded during maximum inspiratory...

Intramuscular pressure (IMP) and electromyography (EMG) mirror muscle force in the nonfatigued muscle during static contractions. The present study explores whether the constant IMP-EMG relationship with increased force may be extended to dynamic contractions and to fatigued muscle. IMP and EMG were recorded from shoulder muscles in three sessions: 1). brief static arm abductions at angles from...

Despite the many reviews and research papers on the limitations of surface electromyography (EMG), there are relatively few that address this issue by considering dynamic contractions and specifically from the point of view of muscle coordination. Nevertheless, whether muscle coordination can be precisely studied using surface EMG signals is still a matter of discussion in the scientific commun...

The objective of this study was to demonstrate how two different linear envelope detectors, as used in the quantification of surface electromyographic (EMG) signals, can lead to differences in the properties of observed computer-averaged EMG profiles. Eight healthy male subjects, aged 24 to 32 years, participated in the study. Computer-averaged EMG profiles for the gluteus medius muscle were re...