These contradictory findings may be the result of methodological differences between the current study and previous research. A variety of methods has been used to determine the intensity of muscle activity including mEMG, peak RMS EMG and integrated EMG. Kadel et al.10 reported Selleck PARP inhibitor muscle activation using integrated EMG signals compared to mEMG values used in the current study to report muscle activation intensity. Furthermore, the previous study normalized to the mEMG of the control condition10 compared to peak EMG of the control condition

used in the current study. An investigation of methods used to quantify electromyography signals revealed that integrated and mEMG values are similar within a given data set15; however a limitation of this study is that it examined only a single condition and did not investigate the effect of changes in the duration of muscle activity. Therefore, the use of these two methodologies may lead to different numerical results and thus the interpretation of EMG results requires caution. The findings of the current study suggest that the amplitude of muscle activation remains unchanged when subjects wore short-leg walking boots. The findings of the current study seemingly contradict previous research that demonstrated a decrease in EMG amplitude. A possible

Luminespib molecular weight reason for these differences in research findings includes the acute nature of the observed adaptation. Though each subject was offered several minutes to acclimate to each short-leg walking boot condition and reported their comfort, a longer period of time may have been required to adapt to walking in the short-leg walking boots. Further, in motor learning increased variability is associated with skill enough acquisition or response to perturbation.16 It is likely that the increased variability associated with the perturbation created by the short-leg walking boot resulted in statistically non-significant findings. A second possible reason that no differences were found between conditions in the current study pertains to the method of normalization. Though previous research has suggested

that the normalization used in the current study is a robust normalization method that accounts for differences in levels of activation based on contraction type, it is plausible that normalization to a maximum voluntary isometric contraction would have produced statistically different EMG amplitudes in response to the short-leg walking boots. The clinical significance of this study pertains to the application of short-leg walking boots as a treatment and rehabilitation tool. The current data suggest that acute adaptations to the short-leg walking boots result in greater volumes of loading to the structures of the foot and ankle due to muscle activation, which may limit the short-term efficacy of walking boots.