Investigating the human brain and muscle coupling during whole-body challenging exercise

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Background

Exposure to exercise increases metabolic rate and favor the decline in force production by muscles when they are contracting at or near their maximum capacity. Fatigue can be defined as a reduction in the force output and/or energy-generating capacity of skeletal muscle, which may manifest itself as an inability to continue exercise at the same intensity. Recent advances in elucidating neurophysiological mechanisms of this acute behavior revealed that fatigue appears to be associated with increased fatigability of skeletal muscle (peripheral factors) and to a smaller extent with a reduced motor neurotransmission in the central nervous system (neural factors). With respect to the wealth of findings that have accumulated over the past decade, one fundamental question still awaits definitive answers. Are we thinking about the fatigue in the right way?
Distinguishing fatigue in components should be ignored since fatigue has complex and interconnected origins that span from the cerebral cortex to muscle cross-bridge cycling. Accumulating evidence suggests contributions from both components to fatigue. After extensively researching and forming opinions about the possible factors causing fatigue, it is apparent that much more experimentation is needed to fully grasp this concept. In the field of neurosciences, how the brain signals change when the muscle fatigues during repeated-effort events, is a relatively unknown question with significant relevance on motor performance. This includes how to capture temporal changes in fatigue. For instance, the relationship between nonlinear properties of human scalp brain signals and levels of muscle force and fatigue being involved in the motor performance could be revealed. Exploring fatigue during the course of exercise is a topic so unexplored by the scientists of today that we still do not know the specific mechanism that causes it. Assessing and localizing changes in brain activity during whole-body exercise remains still challenging. Fatigue is also referred as a subjective state of sustained exhaustion and decreased capacity for physical and mental work that is not relieved by rest. Much speculation has been proposed about this affective state but there is no “gold standard” to measure it. We simply are not at the technological point we need to be at in order to effectively determine fact from speculation. Questions could also relate to how individual differences (personality, sex, species) influence or determine fatigue adaptation.
This Research Topic of the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience and Physiology is to ask the question: How can we appropriately take into account technological advances in brain and muscle imaging and computational modeling to address the continuing lack of consensus regarding the conceptualization and measurement of fatigue?
As the field has expanded, research in this area increasingly incorporates highly interdisciplinary approaches utilizing sophisticated imaging, behavioral, and methodologies to map brain and muscle functions. We welcome novel experimental work and theoretical contributions (e.g., review and opinion articles) using the full range of behavioral neuroscience and neurophysiological approaches, as well as methodological developments and perspectives on any of the above- mentioned aspects. Submissions focusing on fatigue in pathological states such as cardiovascular or metabolic diseases are welcome.

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