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Lateva ZC, McGill KC. Electromyographic imaging of motor-unit architectural properties. Proc 12th Intl Soc Electromyogr Kinesiol (ISEK) Congr, 1998.
Muscle action potentials are shaped not only by the propagation of the excitation along the fiber, as are nerve action potentials, but also by the initiation of the excitation at the endplate and its termination at the muscle/tendon junctions. As a result, the morphology of the motor-unit action potential (MUAP) is largely determined by motor-unit architecture, including endplate locations, fiber lengths, and pinnation. This dependence makes it possible to extract information about motor unit (MU) anatomy from the shape of the MUAP, and information about the architectural relationships between adjacent MUs from the shapes of different MUAPs recorded during the same contraction at the same site. The objective of this work was to relate MUAP characteristics to MU anatomical features in two architecturally different muscles.