The purpose of this study was to investigate skeletal muscle changes induced by an acute bout of plyometric exercise (PlyEx) both before and after PlyEx training, to understand if titin is affected differently after PlyEx training. Healthy untrained individuals (N = 11) completed the 1stPlyEx (10 × 10 squat-jumps, 1-min rest). Thereafter, six subjects completed 8 wk of PlyEx, while five control...

The practice of incorporating augmented eccentric loading (AEL) into resistance exercise is still relatively new. Although limited, there is evidence supporting the contention that AEL may lead to both superior acute and chronic adaptations over more traditional methods. AEL involves coupled concentric and overloaded eccentric muscle actions, and attempts to optimise the muscular adaptations as...

Audiovisual perceptual training of non-native phonetic contrasts was conducted for 10 naive Japanese adults using audiovisual recordings of 13 native English speakers articulating 90 rl minimal word pairs, and analyzed changes in perceptual and articulatory representations of non-native phonetic contrasts. The speech identification score drastically improved during the training. The improvement...

Mechanoelectrical transduction of acoustic signals is the fundamental process for hearing in all ears across the animal kingdom. Here, we performed in vivo laser-vibrometric and electrophysiological measurements at the transduction site in an insect ear (Mecopoda elongata) to relate the biomechanical tonotopy along the hearing organ to the frequency tuning of the corresponding sensory cells. Ou...

In this issue of Neuron, Sehadova et al. show that synchronization of circadian clocks in the brains of Drosophila by daily temperature changes requires chordotonal organs, mechanosensory structures that function as stretch receptors in insects. This is strikingly different from the more direct path by which brain clocks perceive light.

Recent developments in the area of memory management have focused on reducing the eeects of the disk latency problem. These developments include the use of a compressed cache and the utilisation of memory on remote hosts. Further developments in the areas of Quality of Service (QoS) provision and user-level virtual memory have provided the impetus for a more spe-cialised run-time environment th...

During locomotion, major muscle groups are often activated cyclically. This alternate stretch-shorten pattern of activity could enable muscle to function as a spring, storing and recovering elastic recoil potential energy. Because the ability to store and recover elastic recoil energy could profoundly affect the energetics of locomotion, one might expect this to be an adaptable feature of skele...

Reich, T. E., S. L. Lindstedt, P. C. LaStayo, and D. J. Pierotti. Is the spring quality of muscle plastic? Am J Physiol Regulatory Integrative Comp Physiol 278: R1661– R1666, 2000.—During locomotion, major muscle groups are often activated cyclically. This alternate stretch-shorten pattern of activity could enable muscle to function as a spring, storing and recovering elastic recoil potential e...