Muscle synergies in a rod-pointing task.

Smits, E.J. (Esther) (2010) Muscle synergies in a rod-pointing task. thesis, Human Movement Sciences.

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Abstract

A central theme in the study of motor control is the manner in which the degrees of freedom of the human body are organized in order to produce goal-directed movements. The present project was performed in order to achieve more understanding concerning this organization by studying tool-use. Using a tool causes changes in the kinematic characteristics of a movement and therefore a modification of the muscle activity patterns is needed. These changes require a flexible (re-)organization of the muscles to perform a goal-directed movement. In previous literature it was suggested that the CNS does not control muscles individually but in groups and these groups are selected by a module in the spinal cord. These so called muscle synergies consist of a specific activation pattern of the muscles. The current study extends previous research concerning muscle synergies in human reaching movements, by adding a tool. Participants performed reaching movements in eight different directions with three rods of different lengths and without a rod, all in the transversal plane. Electromyographic (EMG) signals of 19 muscles in the right arm and shoulder were recorded during the trials. Using an optimization algorithm, two to six significant synergies were extracted from the EMG patterns for each of the participants. The muscle synergies were modulated in onset time and amplitude by both reaching direction and rod-condition. Combinations of the modulated synergies were able to reconstruct the EMG patterns very well and explained 83-89% of the data variation. Therefore, it was concluded that muscle synergies underlie the control of reaching movements with and without a rod.

Item Type:	Thesis (Thesis)
Supervisor name:	Bongers, dr. R.M.
Faculty:	Medical Sciences
Date Deposited:	25 Jun 2020 10:55
Last Modified:	25 Jun 2020 10:55
URI:	https://umcg.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/1555

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