What does vastus intermedius do

In the current study, the distal thigh was attached by a pad to the dynamometer Fig 1 ; therefore, the pressure on the skin on the surface of the thigh during hip flexion might have affected receptors in the cutaneous tissue. One potential limitation in the present study is that we did not record the force exerted at the knee joint during isometric hip flexion.

Thus, during hip flexion, the VI may have been activated by knee extension or flexion movement. We previously found that, during a maximal knee flexion, antagonistic activation of the VI was In addition, we previously showed that VI electrodes detect a negligible amount of cross-talk from the adjacent VL [ 12 ] and BF muscles [ 26 ].

In conclusion, we investigated the neuromuscular activation of the four QF muscles during isometric hip flexion at three hip joint angles. These results suggest that VI activity is different between hip flexion and knee extension. Activity of the VI during hip flexion might contribute as an antagonist to stabilize the knee joint, and may help to smooth knee joint motion such as in the transition from hip flexion to knee extension during walking, running and pedaling.

As specific muscle activities, including joint angle dependent activity and higher antagonistic coactivation for VI, have been observed from the VI muscle [ 18 , 25 , 26 ], it would be interesting to investigate the change of fascicle length and pennation angle in the VI using ultrasonography [ 34 ] and magnetic resonance imaging [ 35 , 36 ]. Conceived and designed the experiments: AS HA. Performed the experiments: AS.

Analyzed the data: AS HA. Wrote the paper: AS HA. Browse Subject Areas? Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field. Abstract Although activity of the rectus femoris RF differs from that of the other synergists in quadriceps femoris muscle group during physical activities in humans, it has been suggested that the activation pattern of the vastus intermedius VI is similar to that of the RF.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper.

Introduction The quadriceps femoris QF plays an essential role in many human movements such as walking, running and pedaling. Experimental protocol The participants attended our laboratory for familiarization trials at least one week before testing. Download: PPT. Fig 1. Experimental settings for measuring hip flexion torque. Data analysis During the sustained phase, when the MVC torque was calculated, the EMG signal was sampled over ms to calculate the root mean square RMS amplitude during each contraction [ 20 ].

Fig 4. Neuromuscular activation of the four quadriceps femoris muscles at three hip joint angles. Fig 5. Time difference between onset of vastus intermedius and rectus femoris activation. Discussion The purpose of the present study was to examine the neuromuscular activation of the VI during isometric hip flexion.

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