Resultant muscle activity

Hi all,

As part of my model I am looking to compare the muscle activation of certain muscles with those found in literature.

The issue I have is that in the model there are numerous muscles cited compared to just one used in EMG measurements in studies, i.e. soleus medialis 1-3 and soleus lateralis 1-3 compared to just soleus as cited in the literature.

At the moment I have have set the model to deliver the max muscle activities of the various muscles to create one graph of the muscle activity of a larger muscle.

My question is whether this is appropriate if I would like to compare the muscle activity to EMG data from the literature or whether I would be better finding an average of the muscle activity of all the muscles.

Many thanks in advance,
Lewis

I think it depends on how you collect the EMG. If you use a large surface electrode, it will pick up a weighted average of the motor units under it plus some cross talk from adjacent muscles. In this case, the average will probably be the better choice for comparison.

Please notice that EMG only really correlates with muscle force for isometric conditions. If you have a dynamic situation, then much more is going on in the muscle that influences the EMG.

Great, thanks for your help