ArticleThe Journal of physiology2011
In vivo passive mechanical behaviour of muscle fascicles and tendons in human gastrocnemius muscle-tendon units.
Article in The Journal of physiology, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 101 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trial
- Effect of Stroke and Aging on Plantarflexor Strength and Voluntary Activation.Restorative neurology and neuroscience · 2026Article
- What good is a measure of muscle length? The how and why of direct measurements of skeletal muscle motion.Journal of biomechanics · 2023Review
- Clinical studies of magnetic resonance elastography from 1995 to 2021: Scientometric and visualization analysis based on CiteSpace.Quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery · 2022Article
- Foundational Principles and Adaptation of the Healthy and Pathological Achilles Tendon in Response to Resistance Exercise: A Narrative Review and Clinical Implications.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Review
- Negligible epimuscular myofascial force transmission between the human rectus femoris and vastus lateralis muscles in passive conditions.European journal of applied physiology · 2021Article
- Implementing Ultrasound Imaging for the Assessment of Muscle and Tendon Properties in Elite Sports: Practical Aspects, Methodological Considerations and Future Directions.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2021Review
- Passive Mechanical Properties of Human Medial Gastrocnemius and Soleus Musculotendinous Unit.BioMed research international · 2021Article
- Obtaining Quality Extended Field-of-View Ultrasound Images of Skeletal Muscle to Measure Muscle Fascicle Length.Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE · 2020Article
- History-dependence of muscle slack length in humans: effects of contraction intensity, stretch amplitude, and time.Journal of applied physiology (Bethesda, Md. : 1985) · 2020Article
- Muscle Fascicles Exhibit Limited Passive Elongation Throughout the Rehabilitation of Achilles Tendon Rupture After Percutaneous Repair.Frontiers in physiology · 2020Article
- History-dependence of muscle slack length following contraction and stretch in the human vastus lateralis.The Journal of physiology · 2018Article
- A Multi-modality Approach Towards Elucidation of the Mechanism for Human Achilles Tendon Bending During Passive Ankle Rotation.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Article
- Assessment of the mechanical properties of the muscle-tendon unit by supersonic shear wave imaging elastography: a review.Ultrasonography (Seoul, Korea) · 2018Review
- Article
- Passive elongation of muscle fascicles in human muscles with short and long tendons.Physiological reports · 2017Article
- The effect of muscle length on transcranial magnetic stimulation-induced relaxation rate in the plantar flexors.Physiological reports · 2017Article
- Changes in elbow joint's musculo-articular mechanical properties do not alter reaching-related action-perception coupling.European journal of applied physiology · 2017Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Ultrasound imaging was used to measure the length of muscle fascicles in human gastrocnemius muscles while the muscle was passively lengthened and shortened by moving the ankle. In some subjects the muscle belly 'buckled' at short lengths. When the gastrocnemius muscle-tendon unit was passively lengthened from its shortest in vivo length by dorsiflexing the ankle, increases in muscle-tendon length were not initially accompanied by increases in muscle fascicle lengths (fascicle length remained constant), indicating muscle fascicles were slack at short muscle-tendon lengths. The muscle-tendon length at which slack is taken up differs among fascicles: some fascicles begin to lengthen at very short muscle-tendon lengths whereas other fascicles remain slack over a large range of muscle-tendon lengths. This suggests muscle fascicles are progressively 'recruited' and contribute sequentially to muscle-tendon stiffness during passive lengthening of the muscle-tendon unit. Even above their slack lengths muscle fascicles contribute only a small part (<~30%) of the total change in muscle-tendon length. The contribution of muscle fascicles to muscle-tendon length increases with muscle length. The novelty of this work is that it reveals a previously unrecognised phenomenon (buckling at short lengths), posits a new mechanism of passive mechanical properties of muscle (recruitment of muscle fascicles), and confirms with high-resolution measurements that the passive compliance of human gastrocnemius muscle-tendon units is due largely to the tendon. It would be interesting to investigate if adaptations of passive properties of muscles are associated with changes in the distribution of muscle lengths at which fascicles fall slack.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.