NeuroMotion: Open-source platform with neuromechanical and deep network modules to generate surface EMG signals during voluntary movement
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Neuromechanical studies investigate how the nervous system interacts with the musculoskeletal (MSK) system to generate volitional movements. Such studies have been supported by simulation models that provide insights into variables that cannot be measured experimentally and allow a large number of conditions to be tested before the experimental analysis. However, current simulation models of electromyography (EMG), a core physiological signal in neuromechanical analyses, remain either limited in accuracy and conditions or are computationally heavy to apply. Here, we provide a computational platform to enable future work to overcome these limitations by presenting NeuroMotion, an open-source simulator that can modularly test a variety of approaches to the full-spectrum synthesis of EMG signals during voluntary movements. We demonstrate NeuroMotion using three sample modules. The first module is an upper-limb MSK model with OpenSim API to estimate the muscle fibre lengths and muscle activations during movements. The second module is BioMime, a deep neural network-based EMG generator that receives nonstationary physiological parameter inputs, like the afore-estimated muscle fibre lengths, and efficiently outputs motor unit action potentials (MUAPs). The third module is a motor unit pool model that transforms the muscle activations into discharge timings of motor units. The discharge timings are convolved with the output of BioMime to simulate EMG signals during the movement. We first show how MUAP waveforms change during different levels of physiological parameter variations and different movements. We then show that the synthetic EMG signals during two-degree-of-freedom hand and wrist movements can be used to augment experimental data for regressing joint angles. Ridge regressors trained on the synthetic dataset were directly used to predict joint angles from experimental data. In this way, NeuroMotion was able to generate full-spectrum EMG for the first use-case of human forearm electrophysiology during voluntary hand, wrist, and forearm movements. All intermediate variables are available, which allows the user to study cause-effect relationships in the complex neuromechanical system, fast iterate algorithms before collecting experimental data, and validate algorithms that estimate non-measurable parameters in experiments. We expect this modular platform will enable validation of generative EMG models, complement experimental approaches and empower neuromechanical research.
Editor(s)
Haith, Adrian M
Date Issued
2024-07-03
Date Acceptance
2024-06-15
Citation
PLoS Computational Biology, 2024, 20 (7)
ISSN
1553-734X
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Journal / Book Title
PLoS Computational Biology
Volume
20
Issue
7
Copyright Statement
© 2024 Ma et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38959262
PII: PCOMPBIOL-D-23-01615
Subjects
Biochemical Research Methods
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
CREATE
FORCE
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Mathematical & Computational Biology
MODEL
MOTOR UNITS
MUSCLES
RECRUITMENT
Science & Technology
SOFTWARE
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
United States
Article Number
e1012257
Date Publish Online
2024-07-03