Mimicking muscle insufficiency

[Paulo Lucareli]

Dear all,

I would like to mimic muscle insufficiency of some hip muscles during functional tasks. However, I have doubt in terms of witch is the best or most appropriate method to perform this procedure.
I thought to anesthetize the nerve but I'm afraid about the approval of the ethics committee and a lot of adverse effects.
Another option would be fatigue or stretching muscle group but I don't know if I could be so precise as I would like to be. Another option presented today by a colleague was trying to use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) peripherally to see if TMS produces some kind of modulation in peripheral nerve.

I would appreciate any comment and help.

[Warren Darling]

Re: Mimicking muscle insufficiency

If you have a repetitive TMS unit you could use this to stimulate a nerve or muscle(s) to partially fatigue a muscle or group of muscles, but the fatigue would not be complete and would not last very long. Alternatively, you could have subjects perform fatiguing contractions of a particular group of muscles (e.g., hip abductors) but again the fatigue will only last a relatively short time and will not be complete. YOu would have to have subjects quickly perform the functional tasks to view effects of fatigue to a particular muscle/group of muscles and the again induce fatigue to study effects on other functional tasks.