Muscle Physiology - General Overview

Muscle Physiology — General Overview

The muscle physiology laboratory is dedicated to the education and training of students via scientific research.
Our scientific goal is to understand the design and plasticity of the neuromuscular system.

The UCSD muscle physiology laboratory, located in the Veterans Administration Medical Center, was dedicated on September 16, 1986. Currently, the laboratory is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Administration, and private corporations.

The laboratory consists of physiologists, hand surgeons, residents, graduate students, and undergraduates. We encourage collaboration with faculty and scholars from other Universities.

To discover the underlying design principles of the neuromuscular physiology system.
To describe and understand the adaptive ability of the neuromuscular system.
To effectively communicate these findings to the scientific and medical communities.
To teach the scientific method to high school, undergraduate, graduate, medical and post-doctoral students.
To develop student's critical thinking ability.
To provide career guidance at many levels via exposure, discussion and debate.

All of our studies fall into one of two general categories:

Currently, the objectives of the laboratory are:

To understand the relationship between sarcomere length and joint angle in amphibian and mammalian systems.
To understand the architectural design of human arm muscles commonly used in surgical tendon transfer procedures.
To develop analytic and graphical models of muscles, tendons, and the joints on which they act.
To identify the factors which affect strength recovery in humans following surgical tendon transfer.
To identify the cellular events associated with muscle adaptation to surgical manipulation.
To understand the physiological relevance of the various myosin isoforms.

An index of a few abstracts and papers from this year formatted for presentation on the WWW. A more comprehensive list can be found in our Lab Bibliography.

Passive mechanical properties of rat abdominal wall muscles suggest an important role of the extracellular connective tissue matrix. Brown SH, Carr JA, Ward SR, Lieber RL.
The use of neural networks and texture analysis for rapid objective selection of regions of interest in cytoskeletal images. Felder Derkacs AD, Ward SR, Lieber RL.
Simultaneous powering of forearm pronation and key pinch in tetraplegia using a single muscle-tendon unit. Fridén J, Reinholdt C, Gohritz A, Peace WJ, Ward SR, Lieber RL.
A nonlinear model of passive muscle viscosity. Meyer GA, McCulloch AD, Lieber RL.
Sustained improvement in the anal sphincter function following surgical plication of rabbit external anal sphincter muscle. Rajasekaran MR, Jiang Y, Bhargava V, Ramamoorthy S, Lieber RL, Mittal RK.
ISSLS Prize Winner: Adaptations to the multifidus muscle in response to experimentally induced intervertebral disc degeneration. Brown SH, Gregory DE, Carr JA, Ward SR, Masuda K, Lieber RL.
Structure and function of the skeletal muscle extracellular matrix. Gillies AR, Lieber RL.
Passive mechanical properties and related proteins change with botulinum neurotoxin A injection of normal skeletal muscle. Thacker BE, Tomiya A, Hulst JB, Suzuki KP, Bremner SN, Gastwirt RF, Greaser ML, Lieber RL, Ward SR.
Moment arms of the human digital flexors. Franko OI, Winters TM, Tirrell TF, Hentzen ER, Lieber RL.
Skeletal muscle design to meet functional demands. Lieber RL, Ward SR.
Hamstring contractures in children with spastic cerebral palsy result from a stiffer ECM and increased in vivo sarcomere length. Smith LR, Lee KS, Ward SR, Chambers HG, Lieber RL.
Muscle extracellular matrix applies a transverse stress on fibers with axial strain. Smith LR, Gerace-Fowler L, Lieber RL.
Psoas muscle architectural design, in vivo sarcomere length range, and passive tensile properties support its role as a lumbar spine stabilizer. Regev GJ, Kim CW, Tomiya A, Lee YP, Ghofrani H, Garfin SR, Lieber RL, Ward SR.
Quantification of partial or complete A4 pulley release with FDP repair in cadaveric tendons. Franko OI, Lee NM, Finneran JJ, Shillito MC, Meunier MJ, Abrams RA, Lieber RL.
Architectural analysis of human abdominal wall muscles: Implications for mechanical function. Brown SH, Ward SR, Cook MS, Lieber RL.
Elucidation of extracellular matrix mechanics from muscle fibers and fiber bundles. Meyer GA, Lieber RL.

The skeletal muscle physiology laboratory is supported by the Veterans Administration, the National Institutes of Health, NASA and Preferred Medical Products.