Skeletal Muscles Lab Report

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Introduction:
The production of physical movement in humans requires a close interaction between the central nervous system (CNS) and the skeletal muscles. Understanding the interaction behind the mechanisms of these two forces, and how they are activated to provide the smooth coordinated movements (such as walking or picking up a pencil) of everyday life is essential to the study of motor control. Skeletal muscles require the activation of compartmental motor units that generate their own action potentials, and produce a voltage force within the muscle fibers that can be detected and recorded with the use of a electromyography (EMG). Therefore, the purpose of this lab was to determine the differences between the timing of force production …show more content…

The subject’s forearm was prepared by cleaning the surface of their skin (the flexor digitorum superficialis muscle) and the bony prominence of their wrist with an alcohol swab, and the EMG adhesive electrodes where placed on the belly of the flexor digitorum superficialis muscle. The positive electrode was placed more proximal to the elbow, while the negative electrode was placed more mid-distally. The grounding (noise reducing) electrode was places on the bony prominence of the wrist, and the force transducer was setup to achieve a stable baseline. The subject was then instructed to the support their forearm over the edge of the table or on their leg with the wrist in a semi-flexed position, and when ready squeeze the force grip transducer as hard as possible. For the first/”fast” time interval of the experiment, the subject made ten squeezes as fast as possible with one second per squeeze intervals, and the force onset, EMG onset, difference between force onset and EMG onset, peak EMG amplitude, and peak force amplitude were observed and recorded. The experiment was then repeated for a medium, three seconds per squeeze, and slow, five seconds per squeeze time intervals with the same variables observed and

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