This dataset contains the raw electromyographic (EMG) data for 17 participants of the Falling Head experiment of the paper "’Falling Heads’: investigating reflexive responses to head-neck perturbations" by Isabell Wochner, Lennart V. Nölle, Oleksandr V. Martynenko and Syn Schmitt. Always cite the paper together with this dataset because this dataset is not self-explanatory.

Muscle activation was monitored using surface EMG of the right and left sternocleidomastoideus (SCM) muscle and the trapezius muscle. The EMG activity was recorded at 1000 Hz using myoResearch software (Noraxon/USA). The placement of the electrodes at the trapezius muscle was done according to SENIAM guidelines [1]: The electrode pair was placed in the middle of the line between the spinous process of the 7th cervical vertebra and the acromion. The electrodes for the sternocleidomastoideus (SCM) muscle were placed over the middle part of the SCM muscle according to [2]. All electrodes were attached parallel to the muscle fibre orientation at a distance of 20 millimetres. The reference electrode was fixed on the acromion. Volunteers were asked to relax their muscles before the onset of the movement. The trigger signal (at the onset of the movement) was set by a hardware trigger (by braking the power circuit). Furthermore, the demographic characteristics (gender, age, weight, height and BMI) are provided as .txt file.

[1] Hermens, Hermie J., et al. "European recommendations for surface electromyography." Roessingh research and development 8.2 (1999): 13-54. [2] Sheykholeslami, Kianoush; Murofushi, Toshihisa and Kimitaka Kaga. "The effect of sternocleidomastoid electrode location on vestibular evoked myogenic potential." Auris Nasus Larynx 28.1 (2001): 41-43.

The dataset consists of 17 folders (representing the 17 participants), each of these folders contains 6 *txt files (two positions (prone and supine), each with three trials). Furthermore, the dataset contains the demographic description of the participants and a ReadMeEMG.txt file.