ArticleAge (Dordrecht, Netherlands)2016
Age-related changes in motor unit firing pattern of vastus lateralis muscle during low-moderate contraction.
Article in Age (Dordrecht, Netherlands), 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 110 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of Concurrent Strength and Endurance Training on Measures of Physical Fitness in Healthy Middle-Aged and Older Adults: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2023Pooled it
- Quercetin ingestion alters motor unit behavior and enhances improvement in muscle strength following resistance training in older adults: a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial.European journal of nutrition · 2025Trial
- Acute effects of caffeine or quercetin ingestion on motor unit firing pattern before and after resistance exercise.European journal of applied physiology · 2024Trial
- Effect of milk fat globule membrane supplementation on motor unit adaptation following resistance training in older adults.Physiological reports · 2020Trial
- Age-related differences in motor unit discharge rate modulation across contraction levels.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Article
- Ageing does not impair motor neuron adaptations: comparable motor unit responses to strength training in young and older adults.The Journal of physiology · 2026Article
- Association between TMG-derived contractile muscle parameters and MRI-based muscle structure in sarcopenia.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2026Article
- Characterization of motor unit activities during isometric elbow flexion with different speeds.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2025Article
- Relative Contributions of Motor Unit Firing Pattern, Muscle Quantity, and Muscle Quality to Maximum Muscle Strength in Female Patients with Early and Severe Knee Osteoarthritis.Annals of biomedical engineering · 2025Article
- Effects of Aging on Motor Unit Properties in Isometric Elbow Flexion.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Sex Differences in Motor Unit Behavior in Patients With Parkinson's Disease.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Article
- Are females getting more fatigable as they age?European journal of applied physiology · 2025Article
- Changes in motor unit firing pattern are associated with post-exercise blood pressure response in older untreated but not treated hypertensive adults.Experimental physiology · 2025Article
- Immediate effect of local vibration on motor unit firing behavior and muscle strength in healthy young adult males.European journal of applied physiology · 2024Article
- Skeletal muscle dysfunction with advancing age.Clinical science (London, England : 1979) · 2024Review
- Sex differences in laterality of motor unit firing behavior of the first dorsal interosseous muscle in strength-matched healthy young males and females.European journal of applied physiology · 2024Article
- Common synaptic inputs and persistent inward currents of vastus lateralis motor units are reduced in older male adults.GeroScience · 2024Article
- Association between physical fitness tests and neuromuscular properties.European journal of applied physiology · 2024Article
- Neural Drive and Motor Unit Characteristics of the Serratus Anterior in Individuals With Scapular Dyskinesis.Journal of musculoskeletal & neuronal interactions · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Age-related changes in motor unit activation properties remain unclear for locomotor muscles such as quadriceps muscles, although these muscles are preferentially atrophied with aging and play important roles in daily living movements. The present study investigated and compared detailed motor unit firing characteristics for the vastus lateralis muscle during isometric contraction at low to moderate force levels in the elderly and young. Fourteen healthy elderly men and 15 healthy young men performed isometric ramp-up contraction to 70 % of the maximal voluntary contractions (MVC) during knee extension. Multichannel surface electromyograms were recorded from the vastus lateralis muscle using a two-dimensional grid of 64 electrodes and decomposed with the convolution kernel compensation technique to extract individual motor units. Motor unit firing rates in the young were significantly higher (~+29.7 %) than in the elderly (p < 0.05). There were significant differences in firing rates among motor units with different recruitment thresholds at each force level in the young (p < 0.05) but not in the elderly (p > 0.05). Firing rates at 60 % of the MVC force level for the motor units recruited at <20 % of MVC were significantly correlated with MVC force in the elderly (r = 0.885, p < 0.0001) but not in the young (r = 0.127, p > 0.05). These results suggest that the motor unit firing rate in the vastus lateralis muscle is affected by aging and muscle strength in the elderly and/or age-related strength loss is related to motor unit firing/recruitment properties.
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