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Movement reorganization to compensate for fatigue during sawing

Abstract

Peripheral (muscle) aspects of fatigue are well documented. However, little is known about the central aspects of fatigue that could influence, in particular, multijoint coordination. To investigate the central aspects of fatigue, we compared the multijoint kinematics of nonfatigued and fatigued individuals while sawing. Muscle fatigue was associated with decreases in sawing force and movement amplitude at the elbow whereas the basic characteristics of the saw trajectory, including the movement direction, extent and duration, remained invariant. This invariance was maintained by increasing the movement amplitude at the wrist, shoulder and trunk. The system thus takes advantage of the redundancy of the motor apparatus to maintain the endpoint trajectory despite fatigue.

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Correspondence to Julie N. Côté.

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Côté, J.N., Mathieu, P.A., Levin, M.F. et al. Movement reorganization to compensate for fatigue during sawing. Exp Brain Res 146, 394–398 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-002-1186-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-002-1186-6

Keywords

  • Motor control
  • Multijoint coordination
  • Redundancy problem
  • Human