Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

The Lower Limb Muscle Co-activation Map during Human Locomotion: From Slow Walking to Running.

Lorenzo Fiori
* ORCID logo ,
Stefano Filippo Castiglia
ORCID logo ,
Giorgia Chini
ORCID logo ,
Francesco Draicchio
,
Floriana Sacco
,
Mariano Serrao
ORCID logo ,
Antonella Tatarelli
ORCID logo ,
Tiwana Varrecchia
,
Alberto Ranavolo
ORCID logo
Version 1 : Received: 22 January 2024 / Approved: 22 January 2024 / Online: 23 January 2024 (00:13:01 CET)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Fiori, L.; Castiglia, S.F.; Chini, G.; Draicchio, F.; Sacco, F.; Serrao, M.; Tatarelli, A.; Varrecchia, T.; Ranavolo, A. The Lower Limb Muscle Co-Activation Map during Human Locomotion: From Slow Walking to Running. Bioengineering 2024, 11, 288. Fiori, L.; Castiglia, S.F.; Chini, G.; Draicchio, F.; Sacco, F.; Serrao, M.; Tatarelli, A.; Varrecchia, T.; Ranavolo, A. The Lower Limb Muscle Co-Activation Map during Human Locomotion: From Slow Walking to Running. Bioengineering 2024, 11, 288.

Abstract

The central nervous system (CNS) controls movements and regulates joint stiffness with muscle coactivation, but until now few studies have examined muscle pairs during running. This study aims to investigate differences in lower limb muscle coactivation during gait at different speeds from walking to running. Nineteen healthy runners walked and ran at speeds ranging from 0.8 km/h to 9.3 km/h. Twelve lower limb muscles' coactivation was calculated using the time-varying multi-muscle coactivation function (TMCf) with global, flexor-extension, and rostro-caudal approaches. Spatiotemporal and kinematic parameters were also measured. We found that TMCf, spatiotemporal and kinematic parameters were significantly affected by gait speed for all approaches. Significant differences were observed in the main parameters of each coactivation approach, and in the spatiotemporal, and kinematic parameters at the transition between walking and running. Positive and negative strong correlations were found between global coactivation parameters and center of mass displacements, as well as some spatiotemporal parameters, regardless of gait speed. Our findings suggest that walking and running have different coactivation patterns and kinematic characteristics, with the whole-limb stiffness exerted more synchronously and stably in running. The coactivation indexes and kinematic parameters could be the result of global coactivation, which is a sensory-control integration process used by the CNS to deal with more demanding and potentially unstable tasks like running.

Keywords

Muscle coactivations, Walking, Running, Spinal map, sEMG

Subject

Engineering, Bioengineering

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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