EMG Comparison between Sixth Grade Students

Abstract

Physiology Understanding (PhUn) week is the K‐12 outreach program of the American Physiological Society to enhance STEM education. During a PhUn week activity, we seek to observed differences between boys and girls in the electromyography (EMG) of the biceps brachii. An EMG signal is the electrical manifestations of the neuromuscular activity, or action potential, in response to muscle contractions. The signals wavelengths are recorded as a mean voltage or peak‐to‐peak (PP) time. EMG could be affected by the anatomical and physiological characteristics of the muscle, the nervous system, as well as features of the instrumentation being utilized to analyze them. Seventeen middle school students (7 boys and 10 girls), between the ages of 12–14, were ask to voluntarily participate in PhUn week. A Biopac MP40 system was used to acquire the EMG data by examining motor recruitment and skeletal muscle fatigue. The EMG values were recorded on both dominant and non‐dominant arms while holding a 10lb weight at a 45‐degree elbow flexion, for a duration of 2 seconds. Thereafter the same procedure was performed with a 20lb weight and held until skeletal muscle fatigue was reached. The results showed that, overall, there was significant differences between dominant and non‐dominant arms only in P‐P at 10lb (1.4±2.1 vs. 0.9±1.2 ms, respectively, p<0.05). There were no differences between dominant and non‐dominant arms in any EMG signal in boys or girls. However, there was a significant difference between boys and girls when comparing all the P‐P times for 10 and 20lb in dominant and non‐dominant arms showing a higher muscle fiber recruitment in boys. The evidence suggest that the dominant arm tends to have a higher activation of muscle fibers, as opposed to the non‐dominant, and that more muscle fibers are recruited in boys than girls, when performing the same task.Support or Funding InformationThis work was partially supported by the National Institute of General Medicine Sciences of the National Institute of Health under linked Awards Numbers RL5GM118969, TL4GM118971, and UL1GM118970.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.