English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Purpose: Several measures are applied to characterize the functional state of muscles. Among these, the Maximum Voluntary Contraction (MVC) is most frequently used and considered the gold standard. A little understood and used measure is Neuromuscular Efficiency (NME) of muscles. Therefore, the present study was conducted to compare NME indices of several trunk muscles of healthy adults with respect to age and sex. Methods: Overall 100 healthy Caucasian subjects (equally distributed in young (19-39 years) and elderly (48-71 years) and persons of both sexes, i.e. 25 subjects per age group and sex) were investigated during submaximal and maximal isometric tasks of their trunk muscles in sagittal plane. Five major superficial trunk muscles were evaluated by means of Surface EMG (SEMG). NME and MVC values were extracted. NME was calculated using the inverse slope of the logarithmic transform of the SEMG amplitude to torque relationships of the submaximal tests. Results: The abdominal muscles showed no sex differences in NME but were always superior in both elderly groups. As could be expected MVC levels during flexion of men were higher but interestingly no age related MVC differences could be detected. However, for the back muscles NME showed no age-related effects and during extension MVC was reduced with age. Males compared with females showed significantly higher NME indices and also higher MVC values. Absolute SEMG amplitudes levels of all investigated trunk muscles were always lower in the elderly subjects. Conclusions: The NME is an SEMG amplitude independent parameter and may be applied to determine the functional state of (trunk) muscles as a complement to MVC measurements. The observed systematic differences of NME indices between sexes and age groups careful hint towards the NME being related to the functional cross-sectional area of type I fibers.

The Neuromuscular Efficiency of Trunk Muscles is Altered by Age in the Abdominal Muscles but by Gender in the Back Muscles