Authors: Maureen Whitford Carl G Kukulka
Publish Date: 2011/10/01
Volume: 215, Issue: 2, Pages: 101-
Abstract
Evidence from human and animal studies suggests that motor neuron pool organization is not uniform for all motor tasks Groupings of motor units within a muscle may be recruited differentially for a given task based on principles beyond anatomical or architectural features of the muscle alone This study aimed to determine whether 1 there was differential activation across locations of the first dorsal interosseous FDI muscle during a given task 2 the differential activation was related to directional requirements and/or end goal of the task and 3 there was an anatomical pattern to the differential activation Twentysix healthy righthanded participants carried out isometric finger/hand contractions in sitting while surface EMG was collected from 4 bipolar sites on the FDI muscle simultaneously The tasks included abduction flexion diagonal 30 abduction + 30 flexion 30 flexion + 30 abduction key pinch and power grasp Mean peak integrated EMG for each task was normalized to site and task specific mean M waves Differential activation was evident across FDI sites based on movement direction order of directional components within a combination condition and end goal of the task There was greatest activation in the distal ulnar site for all tasks Additionally there was a trend toward an ordering effect in the amount of activation at each site distal ulnar distal radial proximal radial proximal ulnarWe thank Barbara Bregman for her comments on the manuscript draft The Foundation for Physical Therapy supported this study in part by supporting Maureen Whitford with the McMillan Doctoral Scholarship in 2004 We would like to acknowledge all of the participants for volunteering their time and Chris Hahn for his extensive assistance with the statistical analyses The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest Dr Whitford is currently supported by a NIDRR postdoctoral fellowship Advanced Rehabilitation Research Training Grant 113P100015 Bregman PI
Keywords: