The Effect of Sampling Rate on the Analysis of Digital Electromyograms from Vertebrate Muscle

Quantitative electromyography is a widely used, powerful method for determining in vivo patterns of muscle activity in diverse animal behaviours. Recent increased capabilities of microcomputers have simplified quantification of the variation in the intensity of recruitment during muscle activity, whereas the times of onset and offset of muscle activity have commonly been determined without computers (reviewed in Basmajian and De Luca, 1985; Loeb and Gans, 1986). Such computer-assisted analyses of the intensity of electromyograms (EMGs) have facilitated correlating movements with muscle activity (Gorniak and Gans, 1980; Weijs and Dantuma, 1981; De Gueldre and De Vree, 1988), determining the stereotypy of motor patterns within and among taxa (Lauder and Shaffer, 1985; Reilly and Lauder, 1989; Wainwright, 1989; Wainwright et al. 1989) and clarifying the pattern of recruitment within individual muscles (Carrier, 1989; Hutchinson et al. 1989; Jayne et al. 1990).