Many locomotor activities require muscles to actively lengthen, dissipate energy and decelerate the body. These eccentric contractions can disrupt cytoskeletal structures within myofibrils and reduce force output. We examined how architectural features of pennate muscles can provide a protective mechanism against eccentric muscle damage by limiting fascicle lengthening. It has been previously s...

Skeletal muscles can be injured by their own contractions, especially when the muscle is stretched during a lengthening contraction. Exposing a muscle to a conditioning protocol of stretches without activation (passive stretches) before lengthening contractions reduces contraction-induced injury. Although passive stretching does not damage muscle fibers, neutrophils are elevated in the muscle a...

In 1986, a programme was initiated by the senior author to develop a reliable, mechanically activated, intramedullary lengthening device with a non-invasive means of measuring the progress of lengthening without X-ray. We report results of design, biomechanical testing, in vivo animal testing and clinical implantation of the first 20 intramedullary skeletal kinetic distractors (ISKDs) in adult ...

Temporal effects of focus in Swedish were studied in short sentences with systematic variation of the length and prosodic pattern of target words in different syntactic positions. Generally, focus caused an average increase in word duration of about 25%. Variations of word length, stress, or word accent pattern did not produce any systematic effects on the amount of lengthening of the target wo...

We investigate lengthening in spontaneous speech with the aim in mind to use it as a time-management strategy in incremental spoken dialogue systems. lengthening is a common feature of speech, occurring regularly near the edges of intonation phrases. It behaves similar to disfluencies when it occurs in places remote from phrasal boundaries. Disfluencies have proven useful in incremental spoken ...

Neural control of muscle contraction seems to be unique during muscle lengthening. The present study aimed to determine the specific sites of modulatory control for lengthening compared with isometric contractions. We used stimulation of the motor cortex and corticospinal tract to observe changes at the spinal and cortical levels. Motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) and cervicomedullary MEPs (CMEPs)...

conclusions our results support the use of pns in some patients with refractory chronic headaches. appropriate surgical planning and technique are important to achieve good clinical outcome and to minimize complications. background subcutaneous peripheral nerve stimulation (pns) has emerged as a useful tool in the treatment of intractable headaches. however, complications such as skin erosion, ...

background: two main muscles studied in the hand for evaluation of median nerve injuries are opponens pollicis (op) and abductor pollicis brevis (apb). however, riché-cannieu communicating branch (rccb) may limit the use of these muscles in electrodiagnosis. this condition is confusing in the case of median nerve injuries. this study was conducted to evaluate the prevalence of rccb.   methods: ...

When we lengthen a bone in a child, the parents and the family circle are often obsessed by the amount a lengthening obtained. However, for the surgeon, lengthen a bone is quite pretty easy, but dealing with the joints above and below the lengthening area can be very challenging. Indeed, during the lengthening process, muscles and tendons will be progressively stretched, leading to potential jo...

In the maxillary anterior region, the gingival labial margin position is an important parameter in the achievement of an ideal smile. The relationship between the periodontium and the restoration is critical if gingival health and esthetics are to be achieved. Periodontal therapy is a necessary and useful adjunct when any anterior restoration is undertaken. Anterior surgical crown lengthening m...