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Correlation between discharges of human motor units during prolonged muscle contraction

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Abstract

Motor unit (MU) potentials were recorded from the human rectus femoris and biceps brachii muscles during prolonged isometric contraction. Interspike intervals and intervals between adjacent discharges of 2 MUs (cross-intervals of MU pairs) were measured. Synchronization was expressed by the following criteria: the cross-interval histogram; comparison of the number of coincidences between discharges of 2 MUs observed experimentally with the mean probable number of coincidences; the frequency of appearance of N successive coincidences of spikes from different MU pairs; comparison of the mean duration of interspike intervals preceding a synchronized discharge with the mean duration of the remaining interspike intervals for the same MU. For some MU pairs the number of coinciding spikes was greater than the expected number of random coincidences. Synchronized spikes could form a train of consecutive coincidences. The mean duration of interspike intervals preceding a synchronized discharge was somewhat less than the mean duration of the remaining interspike intervals for MUs forming a synchronously firing pair.

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Authors
  1. E. N. Artem'eva
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Institute of Problems of Information Transmission, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow. Translated from Neirofiziologiya, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 68–74, January–February, 1972.

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Artem'eva, E.N. Correlation between discharges of human motor units during prolonged muscle contraction. Neurophysiology 4, 54–59 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067871

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067871

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