Teaching muscle physiology to medical students

Demonstration of surface electromyography (EMG) to medical students in the physiology laboratory will facilitate better understanding of muscle electrophysiology and expose them to a procedure used for clinical investigation and medical research. During the laboratory course students record the electromyogram using surface electrodes. This exercise is intended to give students a firsthand demonstration that electrical activity is produced within them and to allow the students to use this activity to study biological and physiological concepts. The students study the nature of the EMG and the concepts of flexion and extension, reaction time, and the patellar reflex. In this laboratory course, students will also examine motor unit recruitment and skeletal muscle fatigue by combining electromyography and dynamometry. Another goal was to encourage critical thinking. As a method for accomplishing this, the students are required to write a laboratory report on the exercises to describe and offer explanations for their findings, which did require them to think about the data. In postlaboratory evaluations, undergraduate physiology students indicated that they appreciated the opportunity to record electrical activity from their own bodies. In assessments, student responses to this approach were enthusiastic, and gains in their skills and abilities were evident in their comments and in improved performance.