Motor unit characteristics

1) Prior to applying the high-density electrode grids, the skin should be shaved, lightly abraded, and cleansed with an alcoholic solution.

2) Application of the high-density EMG grids

3) Visual inspection of the quality of the signals, refer to (Del Vecchio et al., 2020)

4) Band-pass filtering of EMG signals between 10-20 Hz at the low end and 400-500 Hz at the high end.

5) Removal of channels with low signals-to-noise ratio, refer to (Del Vecchio et al., 2020)

6) Application of the blind source separation algorithm (Farina & Holobar, 2016)

7) Inspection of the decomposed signal quality (see  (Del Vecchio et al., 2020))

8) Identification of spurious motor unit firings by cross-correlation analysis (see  (Del Vecchio et al., 2020))

9) Estimates of motor unit characteristics from the discharge patterns that passed manual inspection (p.8). The tutorial article (Del Vecchio et al., 2020) explains in detail how to calculate the various motor unit characteristics parameters in the present study.

10) Statistical analysis of the motor unit firings across neonates and adults. 

References

Farina D & Holobar A (2016). Characterization of Human Motor Units from Surface EMG Decomposition. Proc IEEE 104, 353–373.

Del Vecchio A, Holobar A, Falla D, Felici F, Enoka RM & Farina D (2020). Tutorial: Analysis of motor unit discharge characteristics from high-density surface EMG signals. J Electromyogr Kinesiol 53, 102426.

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