ArticleeLife2022
The control and training of single motor units in isometric tasks are constrained by a common input signal.
Article in eLife, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- Common inputs to motor units are modulated by force profile and muscle length.Experimental physiology · 2026Article
- High performance sorting of motor unit action potentials with EMUsort.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A single low-dimensional neural component of spinal motor neuron activity explains force generation across repetitive isometric tasks.iScience · 2025Article
- Neuromusculoskeletal Modeling and Force Prediction: Verification Through Experimental Neuromuscular Dynamics.Annals of biomedical engineering · 2025Article
- Flexible control of motor units: is the multidimensionality of motor unit manifolds a sufficient condition?The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
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- Control limitations in the null-space of the wrist muscle system.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The Volitional Control of Individual Motor Units Is Constrained within Low-Dimensional Neural Manifolds by Common Inputs.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Accessing populations of motor units.eLife · 2024Article
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- Myomatrix arrays for high-definition muscle recording.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- The Forces Generated by Agonist Muscles during Isometric Contractions Arise from Motor Unit Synergies.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Neurocognitive and motor-control challenges for the realization of bionic augmentation.Nature biomedical engineering · 2023Article
- Common synaptic input, synergies and size principle: Control of spinal motor neurons for movement generation.The Journal of physiology · 2023Review
- Neuromuscular control: from a biomechanist's perspective.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2023Review
- Flexible neural control of motor units.Nature neuroscience · 2022Article
- Principles of human movement augmentation and the challenges in making it a reality.Nature communications · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent developments in neural interfaces enable the real-time and non-invasive tracking of motor neuron spiking activity. Such novel interfaces could provide a promising basis for human motor augmentation by extracting potentially high-dimensional control signals directly from the human nervous system. However, it is unclear how flexibly humans can control the activity of individual motor neurons to effectively increase the number of degrees of freedom available to coordinate multiple effectors simultaneously. Here, we provided human subjects (N = 7) with real-time feedback on the discharge patterns of pairs of motor units (MUs) innervating a single muscle (tibialis anterior) and encouraged them to independently control the MUs by tracking targets in a 2D space. Subjects learned control strategies to achieve the target-tracking task for various combinations of MUs. These strategies rarely corresponded to a volitional control of independent input signals to individual MUs during the onset of neural activity. Conversely, MU activation was consistent with a common input to the MU pair, while individual activation of the MUs in the pair was predominantly achieved by alterations in de-recruitment order that could be explained by history-dependent changes in motor neuron excitability. These results suggest that flexible MU recruitment based on independent synaptic inputs to single MUs is unlikely, although de-recruitment might reflect varying inputs or modulations in the neuron's intrinsic excitability.
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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.