ArticleNature neuroscience2022
Flexible neural control of motor units.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed.
- Common inputs to motor units are modulated by force profile and muscle length.Experimental physiology · 2026Article
- Motor neurons organize Drosophila feeding sequences via a disinhibitory cascade.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Voluntary Dissociation of Motor Unit Activity in the Vastii Muscles.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Structured modulations in high-density EMG patterns from a single muscle enable simultaneous control of natural and extra degrees of freedom.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Motor Cortical Computations Underlying Natural Dexterous Movement in Freely Flying Bats.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Primate dexterous hand movements are controlled by functionally distinct premotoneuronal systems.Science advances · 2026Article
- Mouse sensorimotor cortex reflects complex kinematic details during reaching and grasping.eLife · 2026Article
- High performance sorting of motor unit action potentials with EMUsort.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Selective direct influence of motor cortex on limb muscle activity during naturalistic climbing in mice.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Neural trajectories improve motor precision.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Supraspinal commands have a modular organization that is behavioral context specific.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Motor cortex flexibly deploys a high-dimensional repertoire of subskills.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- A neural manifold view of the brain.Nature neuroscience · 2025Review
- Large-scale high-density brain-wide neural recording in nonhuman primates.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Flexible control of motor units: is the multidimensionality of motor unit manifolds a sufficient condition?The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Article
- Subsets of extraocular motoneurons produce kinematically distinct saccades during hunting and exploration.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Next-Generation Neurotechnologies Inspired by Motor Primitive Model for Restoring Human Natural Movement.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Voluntary movement requires communication from cortex to the spinal cord, where a dedicated pool of motor units (MUs) activates each muscle. The canonical description of MU function rests upon two foundational tenets. First, cortex cannot control MUs independently but supplies each pool with a common drive. Second, MUs are recruited in a rigid fashion that largely accords with Henneman's size principle. Although this paradigm has considerable empirical support, a direct test requires simultaneous observations of many MUs across diverse force profiles. In this study, we developed an isometric task that allowed stable MU recordings, in a rhesus macaque, even during rapidly changing forces. Patterns of MU activity were surprisingly behavior-dependent and could be accurately described only by assuming multiple drives. Consistent with flexible descending control, microstimulation of neighboring cortical sites recruited different MUs. Furthermore, the cortical population response displayed sufficient degrees of freedom to potentially exert fine-grained control. Thus, MU activity is flexibly controlled to meet task demands, and cortex may contribute to this ability.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.