AD Instruments Student Laboratory Techniques Workshop - Texas A & M University,
College Station, Texas
May 21-22, 2015
By Lisa Mangiamele
This workshop was immensely helpful to me in learning how to use the AD Instruments
PowerLab hardware and LabChart software that Smith owns and that I use in teaching BIO
201, Animal Physiology Lab. Much of the workshop specifically focused on helping
participants gain hands-on experience with several physiology techniques, including:
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Electromyography in human subjects
Measuring muscle force generation in human subjects
Electrocardiography and peripheral pulse in human subjects
Respirometry and metabolic rate in small vertebrate animals
Dissection and electrophysiological recording from the neuromuscular
junction in frogs
Electrophysiological recording from the peripheral nervous system of
earthworms
The most useful technique that I learned is electromyography (recording the electrical
activity of muscles) and grip force measurement in human subjects. I will teach students
this technique in BIO 201 this upcoming fall semester, using it to help students ask the
experimental question: Does conscious activation of the sympathetic nervous system – for
example, when tennis players grunt/scream when they serve – help to increase muscle activity
and/or muscle force output? The workshop helped me learn how to teach students the
proper way to conduct such an experiment with the equipment that we have on hand, and
also how to use the LabChart software to more efficiently analyze data on muscle
activation, muscle force generation, and muscle fatigue. It turns out, there are multiple
ways to get information from an EMG signal, and after this workshop I better understand
how to teach students about the differences in the kind of data that they will be collecting.
Of particular use to me, the workshop highlighted how to make the hardware/software
more accessible and user-friendly to undergraduate students. The LabChart software is a
powerful analysis tool that is used by researchers in the field of physiology, which can
sometimes make it frustrating for a novice. However, I learned several shortcuts and backend settings that the instructor can use to control what data the students see and how they
see it. Pedagogically, this will useful to me in helping Smith students to focus on developing
their practical skills in data analysis instead of worrying about what buttons to press to
output the data in a form that’s useful to them. One of the huge benefits to me of attending
this workshop was the networking with other physiology instructors. The workshop
leaders and other participants were often willing to share their LabChart settings files with
me, making it easy for me to modify them to fit my own needs rather than create new ones
from scratch.