Motoneuron-driven computational muscle modelling with motor unit resolution and subject-specific musculoskeletal anatomy
Author(s)
Caillet, Arnault H
Phillips, Andrew TM
Farina, Dario
Modenese, Luca
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The computational simulation of human voluntary muscle contraction is possible with EMG-driven Hill-type models of whole muscles. Despite impactful applications in numerous fields, the neuromechanical information and the physiological accuracy such models provide remain limited because of multiscale simplifications that limit comprehensive description of muscle internal dynamics during contraction. We addressed this limitation by developing a novel motoneuron-driven neuromuscular model, that describes the force-generating dynamics of a population of individual motor units, each of which was described with a Hill-type actuator and controlled by a dedicated experimentally derived motoneuronal control. In forward simulation of human voluntary muscle contraction, the model transforms a vector of motoneuron spike trains decoded from high-density EMG signals into a vector of motor unit forces that sum into the predicted whole muscle force. The motoneuronal control provides comprehensive and separate descriptions of the dynamics of motor unit recruitment and discharge and decodes the subject’s intention. The neuromuscular model is subject-specific, muscle-specific, includes an advanced and physiological description of motor unit activation dynamics, and is validated against an experimental muscle force. Accurate force predictions were obtained when the vector of experimental neural controls was representative of the discharge activity of the complete motor unit pool. This was achieved with large and dense grids of EMG electrodes during medium-force contractions or with computational methods that physiologically estimate the discharge activity of the motor units that were not identified experimentally. This neuromuscular model advances the state-of-the-art of neuromuscular modelling, bringing together the fields of motor control and musculoskeletal modelling, and finding applications in neuromuscular control and human-machine interfacing research.
Date Issued
2023-12
Date Acceptance
2023-10-16
Citation
PLoS Computational Biology, 2023, 19 (12)
ISSN
1553-734X
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Journal / Book Title
PLoS Computational Biology
Volume
19
Issue
12
Copyright Statement
Copyright: © 2023 Caillet et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Copyright URL
Identifier
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011606
Subjects
ACTION-POTENTIALS
Biochemical Research Methods
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
CONTRACTILE PROPERTIES
FAST-TWITCH FIBERS
FORCE-FREQUENCY
HILL-TYPE
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Mathematical & Computational Biology
MATHEMATICAL-MODEL
MYOCYBERNETIC CONTROL MODEL
NEURAL-CONTROL
REFRACTORY PERIOD
SARCOMERE-LENGTH
Science & Technology
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e1011606
Date Publish Online
2023-12-07