Arm and shoulder muscle synergies when learning a simulated stone flaking task.

Vernooij, C. (Carlijn) (2010) Arm and shoulder muscle synergies when learning a simulated stone flaking task. thesis, Human Movement Sciences.

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Abstract

It is a long-standing question how the central nervous system (CNS) is able to control the many degrees of freedom of the musculoskeletal system to achieve a goal-directed movement. Recently, it is suggested that the CNS relies on a modular control in which each module in the spinal cord couples multiple muscles and thereby generates a specific motor output. Through the combination of a limited set of these specific muscular activation patterns, or synergies, the CNS can simplify the control of motor performance. The current study focuses on how these synergies come into existence and how they develop over learning a novel movement. Electromyographic (EMG) signals of nineteen arm- and shoulder muscles were recorded from participants who were instructed to execute a novel task: simulated stone flaking. In this task, a force plate has to be hit at predetermined angles of blow with a fixed kinetic energy. An optimization algorithm was used to extract a set of two to four significant muscle synergies from the EMG data of participants executing the simulated stone flaking movement both without previous experience and after five days of training. Each of these synergies could be shifted in time onset and amplitude scaling to fit the different conditions. Results from the experiment show that participants were unable to produce the demanded angles of blow and thereby could not produce appropriate force vectors. In addition, synergies were not comparable over time or between participants. This suggests that synergies cannot explain the EMG patterns generated in the novel simulated stone flaking task.

Item Type:	Thesis (Thesis)
Supervisor name:	Bongers, dr. R.M. and Mouton, dr. L.J.
Faculty:	Medical Sciences
Date Deposited:	25 Jun 2020 11:02
Last Modified:	25 Jun 2020 11:02
URI:	https://umcg.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/2222

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