Tutorial: Analysis of motor unit discharge characteristics from high-density surface EMG signals

Recent work demonstrated that it is possible to identify motor unit discharge times from high-density surfaceEMG (HDEMG) decomposition. Since then, the number of studies that use HDEMG decomposition for motor unitinvestigations has increased considerably. Although HDEMG decomposition is a semi-automatic process, theanalysis and interpretation of the motor unit pulse trains requires a thorough inspection of the output of thedecomposition result. Here, we report guidelines to perform an accurate extraction of motor unit discharge timesand interpretation of the signals. This tutorial includes a discussion of the differences between the extraction ofglobal EMG signal features versus the identification of motor unit activity for physiological investigations followedby a comprehensive guide on how to acquire, inspect, and decompose HDEMG signals, and robust extractionof motor unit discharge characteristics.