ArticleRoyal Society open science2016
Physiological tremor reveals how thixotropy adapts skeletal muscle for posture and movement.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Characteristics of Post-Exercise Lower Limb Muscle Tremor Among Speed Skaters.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Twitches, Blinks, and Fidgets: Important Generators of Ongoing Neural Activity.The Neuroscientist : a review journal bringing neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry · 2019Review
- Muscle thixotropy-where are we now?Journal of applied physiology (Bethesda, Md. : 1985) · 2019Review
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
People and animals can move freely, but they must also be able to stay still. How do skeletal muscles economically produce both movement and posture? Humans are well known to have motor units with relatively homogeneous mechanical properties. Thixotropic muscle properties can provide a solution by providing a temporary stiffening of all skeletal muscles in postural conditions. This stiffening is alleviated almost instantly when muscles start to move. In this paper, we probe this behaviour. We monitor both the neural input to a muscle, measured here as extensor muscle electromyography (EMG), and its output, measured as tremor (finger acceleration). Both signals were analysed continuously as the subject made smooth transitions between posture and movement. The results showed that there were marked changes in tremor which systematically increased in size and decreased in frequency as the subject moved faster. By contrast, the EMG changed little and reflected muscle force requirement rather than movement speed. The altered tremor reflects naturally occurring thixotropic changes in muscle behaviour. Our results suggest that physiological tremor provides useful and hitherto unrecognized insights into skeletal muscle's role in posture and movement.
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