Intermuscular coherence reveals that affective emotional pictures modulate neural control mechanisms during the initiation of arm pointing movements.

Introduction: Several studies in psychology provided compelling evidence that emotions significantly impact motor control. Yet, these evidences mostly rely on behavioral investigations, whereas the underlying neurophysiological processes remain poorly understood.

Methods: Using a classical paradigm in motor control, we tested the impact of affective pictures associated with positive, negative or neutral valence on the kinematics and patterns of muscle activations of arm pointing movements performed from a standing position.

Effects of hand configuration on muscle force coordination, co-contraction and concomitant intermuscular coupling during maximal isometric flexion of the fingers.

Purpose: The mechanisms governing the control of musculoskeletal redundancy remain to be fully understood. The hand is highly redundant, and shows different functional role of extensors according to its configuration for a same functional task of finger flexion. Through intermuscular coherence analysis combined with hand musculoskeletal modelling during maximal isometric hand contractions, our aim was to better understand the neural mechanisms underlying the control of muscle force coordination and agonist-antagonist co-contraction.

Fatigue- and training-related changes in 'beta' intermuscular interactions between agonist muscles.

The synchronous activation of the muscles involved in force production is crucial for the neuromuscular performance, but the underlying mechanisms remain to be fully elucidated. Our aim was thus to contribute to understand the mechanisms involved in the synergistic activation of agonist muscles. Through wavelet-based time-frequency analysis, this study investigated the modulation of 'beta' intermuscular interactions (IM) during maximum isometric knee extensions performed before and after repetitive submaximal fatiguing contractions.