Antagonist muscle co-activation of limbs in human infant crawling: A pilot study

Muscle Co-activation (MCo) is the simultaneous muscular activation of agonist and antagonist muscle groups, which provides adequate joint stability, movement accuracy during movement. Infant crawling is an important stage of motor function development that manifests non-synchronization growth and development of upper and lower limbs due to the well-known gross motor development principle of head to toe. However, the effect of MCo level for agonist and antagonist muscle groups on motor function development of limbs has not been previously reported. In this paper, sEMG signals were collected from triceps brachii (TB) and biceps brachii (BB), quadriceps femoris (QF) and hamstrings (HS) of limbs when fourteen infants were crawling at their self-selected speed. Antagonist muscle co-activation was evaluated by measuring two common indexes (co-activation index and Pearson´s correlation coefficient).A significant difference was observed between upper limbs and lower limbs, but the relationship between MCo and speed of crawling was poor. This study is an opening for further investigation including a longitudinal study and compare against infant with CNS disorders.