Identification of the best stimulation parameters to measure in situ the comunication between muscle and nerve in mouse tibialis muscle

Investigating the path functionality of the nerve stimulation signal and the muscle contraction is of primary importance in the study of a wide variety of pathologic conditions: neuromuscular diseases like Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, as well as acute denervation and aging. Alterations of coupling between motor neuron conduction and muscle contraction can be studied in mice, comparing the muscle contraction elicited by two alternating stimulation paradigms: direct stimulation on the membrane and indirect stimulation through the nerve. The fundamental assumption behind this approach is that in a healthy model the two stimulations should lead to the same contractile response of the muscle. In this work we have searched for the pulse stimulation parameters that better resemble the physiological action potential. Applying these optimized stimulations it is then possible to design new final protocols to evaluate all the contractile parameters of muscle tissue in a wide variety of pathological models.