Neuromuscular Contributions to Age-Related Weakness

Airway clearance in neuromuscular weakness.

Impaired airway clearance leads to recurrent chest infections and respiratory deterioration in neuromuscular weakness. It is frequently the cause of death. Cough is the major mechanism of airway clearance. Cough has several components, and assessment tools are available to measure the different components of cough. These include measuring peak cough flow, respiratory muscle strength, and inspir...

Age-related neuromuscular function during drop jumps.

Muscle- and movement-specific fascicle-tendon interaction affects the performance of the neuromuscular system. This interaction is unknown among elderly and consequently contributes to the lack of understanding the age-related problems on neuromuscular control. The present experiment studied the age specificity of fascicle-tendon interaction of the gastrocnemius medialis (GM) muscle in drop jum...

Age-Related Neuromuscular Adjustments Assessed by EMG

Aging is characterized by changes in the neuromuscular system that decrease muscle strength, balance, proprioception and reaction time (Bassey, 1997). Aging may be accompanied by adjustments in muscle activation such as a decrease in voluntary activation and alterations in the rate of agonist/antagonist coactivation (Häkkinen et al., 1998). This progressive decline in physical capacities reduce...

Ocular contributions to age-related loss in coarse stereopsis.

PURPOSE To determine the basis for the dramatic decline in coarse stereopsis that occurs with age. METHODS The Frisby test was used to assess stereopsis in a large sample of randomly selected persons over the age of 58 years. A number of other vision functions were also assessed in the same persons. The data were used to address the question of whether the decline in stereopsis reflects age-r...

Acquired Neuromuscular Weakness in Critical Illness