ArticleJournal of neurophysiology2009
Structured variability of muscle activations supports the minimal intervention principle of motor control.
Article in Journal of neurophysiology, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 113 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
113 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A Systematic Review of EMG Applications for the Characterization of Forearm and Hand Muscle Activity during Activities of Daily Living: Results, Challenges, and Open Issues.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Pooled it
- Trial
- Robustness of muscle synergies underlying three-dimensional force generation at the hand in healthy humans.Journal of neurophysiology · 2012Trial
- Control of fingertip forces in young and older adults pressing against fixed low- and high-friction surfaces.PloS one · 2012Trial
- Spatially selective enhancement of proprioceptive acuity following motor learning.Journal of neurophysiology · 2011Trial
- Coordinative structures as scale-free networks: Cascade and percolation dynamics in motor learning with empirical validation.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Loss of hand control expressiveness revealed by task- and individual-specificity in spatiotemporal finger coordination.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The illusion of internal models in biological movement.European journal of applied physiology · 2025Review
- Motor modules are largely unaffected by pathological walking biomechanics: a simulation study.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2025Article
- Implicit motor adaptation patterns in a redundant motor task manipulating a stick with both hands.eLife · 2024Article
- Ethnokinesiology: towards a neuromechanical understanding of cultural differences in movement.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Roles and interplay of reinforcement-based and error-based processes during reaching and gait in neurotypical adults and individuals with Parkinson's disease.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Dissecting muscle synergies in the task space.eLife · 2024Article
- Reinforcement-based processes actively regulate motor exploration along redundant solution manifolds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Motor control complexity can be dynamically simplified during gait pattern exploration using motor control-based biofeedback.Journal of neurophysiology · 2023Article
- Virtual Stiffness: A Novel Biomechanical Approach to Estimate Limb Stiffness of a Multi-Muscle and Multi-Joint System.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- "Frontiers in sports and active living · 2023Article
- Generalizability of muscle synergies in isometric force generation versus point-to-point reaching in the human upper extremity workspace.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Article
- Neuromuscular control: from a biomechanist's perspective.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2023Review
53 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Numerous observations of structured motor variability indicate that the sensorimotor system preferentially controls task-relevant parameters while allowing task-irrelevant ones to fluctuate. Optimality models show that controlling a redundant musculo-skeletal system in this manner meets task demands while minimizing control effort. Although this line of inquiry has been very productive, the data are mostly behavioral with no direct physiological evidence on the level of muscle or neural activity. Furthermore, biomechanical coupling, signal-dependent noise, and alternative causes of trial-to-trial variability confound behavioral studies. Here we address those confounds and present evidence that the nervous system preferentially controls task-relevant parameters on the muscle level. We asked subjects to produce vertical fingertip force vectors of prescribed constant or time-varying magnitudes while maintaining a constant finger posture. We recorded intramuscular electromyograms (EMGs) simultaneously from all seven index finger muscles during this task. The experiment design and selective fine-wire muscle recordings allowed us to account for a median of 91% of the variance of fingertip forces given the EMG signals. By analyzing muscle coordination in the seven-dimensional EMG signal space, we find that variance-per-dimension is consistently smaller in the task-relevant subspace than in the task-irrelevant subspace. This first direct physiological evidence on the muscle level for preferential control of task-relevant parameters strongly suggest the use of a neural control strategy compatible with the principle of minimal intervention. Additionally, variance is nonnegligible in all seven dimensions, which is at odds with the view that muscle activation patterns are composed from a small number of synergies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.