ArticleJournal of neurophysiology2015
The optimal neural strategy for a stable motor task requires a compromise between level of muscle cocontraction and synaptic gain of afferent feedback.
Article in Journal of neurophysiology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evidence of splinting in low back pain? A systematic review of perturbation studies.European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society · 2018Pooled it
- Neuromuscular and behavioural evidence of motor control adaptations following 8 weeks of virtual reality exergaming.European journal of applied physiology · 2026Article
- The effect of prolonged slump sitting on postural sway in female athletes and non-athletes.BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Torque regulation is affected by joint angle during isometric contraction in young male adults.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The variability of reflex amplitude estimates in motor unit pools depends on the phenotype distribution and discharge statistics.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Sensory reweighting for postural stability in individuals with low vision and blindness: balance adaptation and muscle co-contraction.Frontiers in physiology · 2025Article
- Lower limb suspension induces threshold-specific alterations of motor units properties that are reversed by active recovery.Journal of sport and health science · 2024Article
- Linking cortex and contraction-Integrating models along the corticomuscular pathway.Frontiers in physiology · 2023Article
- Computational evidence for nonlinear feedforward modulation of fusimotor drive to antagonistic co-contracting muscles.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Amplitude cancellation influences the association between frequency components in the neural drive to muscle and the rectified EMG signal.PLoS computational biology · 2019Article
- Cardinal features of involuntary force variability can arise from the closed-loop control of viscoelastic afferented muscles.PLoS computational biology · 2018Article
- Physiological tremor increases when skeletal muscle is shortened: implications for fusimotor control.The Journal of physiology · 2017Article
- Voluntary activation and variability during maximal dynamic contractions with aging.European journal of applied physiology · 2017Article
- The human motor neuron pools receive a dominant slow-varying common synaptic input.The Journal of physiology · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Increasing joint stiffness by cocontraction of antagonist muscles and compensatory reflexes are neural strategies to minimize the impact of unexpected perturbations on movement. Combining these strategies, however, may compromise steadiness, as elements of the afferent input to motor pools innervating antagonist muscles are inherently negatively correlated. Consequently, a high afferent gain and active contractions of both muscles may imply negatively correlated neural drives to the muscles and thus an unstable limb position. This hypothesis was systematically explored with a novel computational model of the peripheral nervous system and the mechanics of one limb. Two populations of motor neurons received synaptic input from descending drive, spinal interneurons, and afferent feedback. Muscle force, simulated based on motor unit activity, determined limb movement that gave rise to afferent feedback from muscle spindles and Golgi tendon organs. The results indicated that optimal steadiness was achieved with low synaptic gain of the afferent feedback. High afferent gains during cocontraction implied increased levels of common drive in the motor neuron outputs, which were negatively correlated across the two populations, constraining instability of the limb. Increasing the force acting on the joint and the afferent gain both effectively minimized the impact of an external perturbation, and suboptimal adjustment of the afferent gain could be compensated by muscle cocontraction. These observations show that selection of the strategy for a given contraction implies a compromise between steadiness and effectiveness of compensations to perturbations. This indicates that a task-dependent selection of neural strategy for steadiness is necessary when acting in different environments.
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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.