Voluntary and tremorogenic inputs to motor neuron pools of agonist/antagonist muscles in essential tremor patients
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Pathological tremor is an oscillation of body parts at 3–10 Hz, determined by the output of spinal motor neurons (MNs), which receive synaptic inputs from supraspinal centers and muscle afferents. The behavior of spinal MNs during tremor is not well understood, especially in relation to the activation of the multiple muscles involved. Recent studies on patients with essential tremor have shown that antagonist MN pools receive shared input at the tremor frequency. In this study, we investigated the synaptic inputs related to tremor and voluntary movement, and their coordination across antagonist muscles. We analyzed the spike trains of motor units (MUs) identified from high-density surface electromyography from the forearm extensor and flexor muscles in 15 patients with essential tremor during postural tremor. The shared synaptic input was quantified by coherence and phase difference analysis of the spike trains. All pairs of spike trains in each muscle showed coherence peaks at the voluntary drive frequency (1–3 Hz, 0.2 ± 0.2, mean ± SD) and tremor frequency (3–10 Hz, 0.6 ± 0.3) and were synchronized with small phase differences (3.3 ± 25.2° and 3.9 ± 22.0° for the voluntary drive and tremor frequencies, respectively). The coherence between MN spike trains of antagonist muscle groups at the tremor frequency was significantly smaller than intramuscular coherence. We predominantly observed in-phase activation of MUs between agonist/antagonist muscles at the voluntary frequency band (0.6 ± 48.8°) and out-of-phase activation at the tremor frequency band (126.9 ± 75.6°). Thus MNs innervating agonist/antagonist muscles concurrently receive synaptic inputs with different phase shifts in the voluntary and tremor frequency bands.
Date Issued
2019-11-01
Date Acceptance
2019-09-07
Citation
Journal of Neurophysiology, 2019, 122 (5), pp.2043-2053
ISSN
0022-3077
Publisher
American Physiological Society
Start Page
2043
End Page
2053
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Neurophysiology
Volume
122
Issue
5
Copyright Statement
© 2019 the American Physiological Society
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_US: © the American Physiological Society.
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_US: © the American Physiological Society.
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000498170200019&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Neurosciences
Physiology
Neurosciences & Neurology
coherence
EMG
essential tremor
motor units
neural drive
voluntary control
COMMON SYNAPTIC INPUT
DRIVE
UNITS
SYNCHRONIZATION
STRENGTH
OSCILLATORS
MOTONEURONS
CONTRACTION
SUPPRESSION
DISCHARGES
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2019-10-31