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Research Articles

Changes in Muscle Activity in Response to Assistive Force during Isometric Elbow Flexion

ORCID Icon, , &
Pages 634-642 | Received 05 Dec 2018, Accepted 04 Sep 2019, Published online: 01 Oct 2019
 

Abstract

This study investigated the muscle activity and force variability in response to perturbation of assistive force during isometric elbow flexion. Sixteen healthy right-handed young men (age: 22.0 ± 1.1 years; height: 171.9 ± 4.8 cm; weight 68.4 ± 11.2 kg) were recruited and the muscle activity of biceps brachii and triceps brachii were assessed using surface electromyography. Workload force and assistive force applied on isometric elbow flexion significantly affected the changes in both biceps and triceps muscle activities. A higher assistive force was shown to result in reduced biceps muscle activity compared to the unassisted period. In contrast, the efficiency of the assistive force acting on the biceps decreased as the assistive force increased. In general, the force variability of the biceps muscle remained approximately the same at lower workload force conditions than that at higher workload force conditions. In conclusion, higher assistive force may not yield a higher performance efficiency in human-assistive force interaction.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Nos. JP15K4619 and 17H01454).

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