ArticlePloS one2015
Experimental Muscle Pain Impairs the Synergistic Modular Control of Neck Muscles.
Article in PloS one, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 80 citations in OpenAlex.
- The influence of musculoskeletal pain disorders on muscle synergies-A systematic review.PloS one · 2018Pooled it
- Effect of neck-specific exercises on trapezius muscle function in chronic whiplash-associated disorders: a longitudinal case-control study using ultrasound and speckle-tracking analyses.Scientific reports · 2026Trial
- The effect of tablet tilt angles and time on posture, muscle activity, and discomfort at the neck and shoulder in healthy young adults.PloS one · 2023Trial
- Myofascial trigger points alter the modular control during the execution of a reaching task: a pilot study.Scientific reports · 2019Trial
- Neck-specific exercise improves impaired interactions between ventral neck muscles in chronic whiplash: A randomized controlled ultrasound study.Scientific reports · 2018Trial
- Article
- Electromyographic Differences in Hyoid and Superficial Muscle Activity During Dynamic Neck Movement in Individuals with Chronic Neck Pain.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Relationship between anxiety symptoms and cervical motor control in individuals without diagnosed psychiatric or neurological disorders.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Electro-tactile modulation of muscle activation and intermuscular coordination in the human upper extremity.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Neck muscle function improves after neck exercises in individuals with whiplash-associated disorders: a case-control ultrasound study with speckle-tracking analyses.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Muscle synergies are shared across fundamental subtasks in complex movements of skateboarding.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Understanding muscle coordination during gait based on muscle synergy and its association with symptoms in patients with knee osteoarthritis.Clinical rheumatology · 2024Article
- Muscle synergy patterns as altered coordination strategies in individuals with chronic low back pain: a cross-sectional study.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2023Article
- Muscle synergies in Parkinson's disease before and after the deep brain stimulation of the bilateral subthalamic nucleus.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Variability of trunk muscle synergies underlying the multidirectional movements and stability trunk motor tasks in healthy individuals.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Optimal Identification of Muscle Synergies From Typical Sit-to-Stand Clinical Tests.IEEE open journal of engineering in medicine and biology · 2023Article
- [Feeling stiff…but what does it mean objectively? : Can you measure muscle tension?]Schmerz (Berlin, Germany) · 2022Review
- Effects of experimental pain on the cervical spine reposition errors.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2022Article
- Neck Pain: Do We Know Enough About the Sensorimotor Control System?Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A motor task can be performed via different patterns of muscle activation that show regularities that can be factorized in combinations of a reduced number of muscle groupings (also referred to as motor modules, or muscle synergies). In this study we evaluate whether an acute noxious stimulus induces a change in the way motor modules are combined to generate movement by neck muscles. The neck region was selected as it is a region with potentially high muscular redundancy. We used the motor modules framework to assess the redistribution of muscular activity of 12 muscles (6 per side) in the neck region of 8 healthy individuals engaged in a head and neck aiming task, in non-painful conditions (baseline, isotonic saline injection, post pain) and after the injection of hypertonic saline into the right splenius capitis muscle. The kinematics of the task was similar in the painful and control conditions. A general decrease of activity was noted for the injected muscle during the painful condition together with an increase or decrease of the activity of the other muscles. Subjects did not adopt shared control strategies (motor modules inter subject similarity at baseline 0.73±0.14); the motor modules recorded during the painful condition could not be used to reconstruct the activation patterns of the control conditions, and the painful stimulus triggered a subject-specific redistribution of muscular activation (i.e., in some subjects the activity of a given muscle increased, whereas in other subjects it decreased with pain). Alterations of afferent input (i.e., painful stimulus) influenced motor control at a multi muscular level, but not kinematic output. These findings provide new insights into the motor adaptation to pain.
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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.