NEUROBIOLOGY OF MUSCLE FATIGUE

Muscle fatigue encompasses a class of acute effects that impair motor performance. The mechanisms that can produce fatigue involve all elements of the motor system, from a failure of the formulation of the descending drive provided by suprasegmental centers to a reduction in the activity of the contractile proteins. We propose four themes that provide a basis for the systematic evaluation of the neural and neuromuscular fatigue mechanisms: 1) task dependency to identify the conditions that activate the various mechanisms; 2) force-fatigability relationship to explore the interaction between the mechanisms that results in a hyperbolic relationship between force and endurance time; 3) muscle wisdom to examine the association among a concurrent decline in force, relaxation rate, and motor neuron discharge that results in an optimization of force; and 4) sense of effort to determine the role of perceived effort in the impairment of performance. On the basis of this perspective with an emphasis on neural mechanisms, we suggest a number of experiments to advance our understanding of the neurobiology of muscle fatigue.