Detection of human reflex response time-delay to a stretch muscular perturbation

The paper presents the results of a comparative study of the respective efficiency of three parametric signal processing methods to detect abrupt spectral changes by means of the detection of abrupt model discontinuities, while they were applied to the very particular case of inspection of change in myoelectric activity of surface electromyograms (EMG). The studied surface electromyograms are those of biceps brachii during a perturbed flexion-extension forearm movement in the horizontal plane. After the description of the experimental device, the position problem is then formally considered, and the different methods used are briefly recalled. Finally, the results observed on a large set of trials are shown to highlight the behaviour of each selected method before concluding on the opportunity to use them to characterize some neuropathies