## 3 Results  
Real EMG data from six surface muscles, obtained from ten healthy volunteers, are used in this study. The investigated subjects followed a protocol of cyclic motor tasks for elbow movement consisting of four phases--full flexion, full extension, and two poses between them. The active phases have different time durations, and they are performed without and with added weight. To answer the question of whether some of these cyclic motor tasks can be omitted due to the similarity in the calculated area under the EMG curves (after filtration, rectification, and normalization), the correlation dependences between eight flexion and eight extension phases are detected using ICrA. Having the answer, we will be able to exclude from the EP slower and harder tasks. A slower task will be omitted if its flexion and extension phases simultaneously participate in consonance pairs with flexion and extension phases from a faster task. Thus, the number of studied cyclic movements will be reduced, and the FEP will be optimized. For each subject (S1, S2,..., S10), an initial index matrix was created with the criteria (by rows) of the respective flexion phases from TASK 3 to TASK LOAD 10 and the six muscles as objects (by columns). Altogether, ten IMs are constructed. The results for twenty-eight flexion-phase pairs for the ten subjects are summarized in Table 2.  
As can be seen from Table 2, a positive consonance (according to Table 1) is observed for ten pairs altogether, namely 10 fsp-6 fsp, 10 fsp-2 fsp, 6 fsp-2 fspW, 1 fsp-6 fspW, 1 fsp-2 fspW, 10 fspW-6 fspW, 10 fspW-1 fspW, 6 fspW-2 fspW, 6 fspW-1 fspW, and 2 fspW-1 fspW. For three criteria pairs (10 fsp-6 fsp, 6 fsp-2 fspW, and 10 fspW-6 fspW), strong positive and positive consonance was found. In the remaining seven pairs (10 fsp-2 fsp, 1 fsp-6 fspW, 1 fspW-1 fspW, 6 fspW-2 fspW, 6 fspW-1 fspW, 6 fspW-2 fspW, 6 fspW-1 fspW, and 2 fspW-1 fspW), besides strong positive and positive consonance, weak positive consonance also appears for some of the investigated subjects. Due to the detected consonance relations, the tasks containing correlated flexion phases will be considered in the next step for possible exclusion from the FEP. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline
**Means** & **\(\mu\)-Values** \\ \hline positive consonance & strong positive & (0.95, 1.00] \\  & positive & (0.85, 0.95] \\  & weak positive & (0.75, 0.85] \\ \hline dissonance & & (0.25; 0.75] \\ \hline negative consonance & weak negative & (0.15, 0.25] \\  & negative & (0.05, 0.15] \\  & strong negative & [0.00, 0.05] \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: ICrA \(\mu\)-scale for positive consonance, dissonance, and negative consonance. The results in Table 2 show relations in positive consonance, as well as relations in dissonance, for the remaining eighteen criteria pairs. The included phases in these pairs are considered independent, and thus the tasks containing them will remain in the EP. It is interesting to note that five criteria pairs from the movements with loads are in positive consonance (10 fspW-6 fspW, 10 fspW-1 fspW, 6 fspW-2 fspW, 6 fspW-1 fspW, and 2 fspW-1 fspW). Two pairs in positive consonance are observed for movements without added weight (10 fsp-6 fsp, 10 fsp-2 fsp). Three pairs in positive consonance were found for movements without and with added load (6 fsp-2 fspW, 1 fsp-6 fspW, 1 fsp-2 fspW). One can conclude that the added weight influences the muscle interactions. In the next step, in a similar way, the extension phases from TASK 3 to TASK LOAD10 were the criteria, and the six muscles were objects in the initial IMs. Again, ten IMs are constructed, one for each subject. The ICrA results for twenty-eight extension-phase pairs are presented in Table 3.  
As shown in Table 3, for the extension phases from TASK 3 to TASK LOAD 10, analogous ICrA calculations were made. The following relations in positive consonance (according to Table 1) were observed: 10 esp-6 esp, 10 espW-6 espW, 10 espW-2 espW, and 2 espW-1 espW.