Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Humans use many inter- and intra-muscular control strategies to coordinate movement. To investigate these fundamental control strategies, multi-level research is required which assesses the activation of whole muscles, isolated muscle regions, and single motor units. This facilitates a comprehensive understanding of basic neuromuscular function between, and within muscles. Such assessment of the neuromuscular system provides a broad understanding of the neural control of movement. The central focus of the applicants' research programs is to explore the association between neuromuscular control strategies on movement biomechanics, motor learning, and how these strategies change across the lifespan. Electromyography (EMG) - the study of electrical activity produced by skeletal muscles - is a common modality used across all listed applicants' research programs. The applicants are requesting High-Density Surface EMG (HD-sEMG) equipment; a state-of-the-art tool to assess inter- and intra-muscular coordination during various physiological and biomechanical conditions and interventions. HD-sEMG is currently driving groundbreaking discoveries in muscle function. The equipment allows for the non-invasive acquisition of up to 400 channels of sEMG, across a variety of muscles, aiding in the understanding of muscular activation strategies, muscle activation topology, conduction velocity, and single motor unit activation characteristics. The research team has unique and diverse backgrounds, which will exploit the infrastructure to examine the neuromuscular system across a variety of conditions (i.e., exercise, maturation, rehabilitation, and biofeedback) and body locations (i.e., lower extremity, spine, and upper extremity), to better understand basic mechanisms in neuromuscular control. Each year the applicants train 30-40 HQP. Access to the HD-sEMG equipment is foundational to their training. The features of this system will enrich the applicants' research findings by allowing for a multitude of measures simultaneously, without the need for invasive indwelling electrodes, which impede the acquisition of data in certain subgroups (i.e., children) and certain conditions (e.g., high intensity exercise). EMG is paramount to all the applicants' research programs and the lack of HD-sEMG at our institution is fundamentally limiting our collective research capacity. The HD-sEMG equipment is critical to the advancement of our individual research programs, to provide enhanced collaboration across research disciplines, and for HQP exposure to novel techniques. Collectively, the applicants take a unique, multi-level research approach, which encourages HQP to appreciate the regulation of muscle function at a variety of levels. This research will contribute novel approaches to understanding basic neuromuscular strategies that support muscle function, and for adaptations underpinning exercise, maturation, rehabilitation, and skill acquisition.