Muscle thixotropy appears to be a property of the Short Range Elastic Component (SREC) in frog muscle.
Does not yet inform clinical muscle assessments; leaves open whether SREC mediates thixotropy in mammalian or cardiac tissue.
Small forces were applied to isolated frog muscle; the resulting displacements were used to calculate muscle stiffness (elastic modulus, E). Stiffness is much greater for small forces within the range of the Short Range Elastic Component (SREC; Hill, 1968). 'Stirring' the muscle greatly reduces the stiffness, but only when the applied force is small. Stiffness subsequently returns to its original level. This strongly suggests that muscle thixotropy (Lakie, Walsh & Wright, 1984) is a property of the SREC.
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Lakie et al. (1988) studied this question.