ArticleeLife2024
Supercomputer framework for reverse engineering firing patterns of neuron populations to identify their synaptic inputs.
Article in eLife, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Age-related differences in motor unit discharge rate modulation across contraction levels.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Probabilistic inference of homonymous and heteronymous recurrent inhibition in human muscles from large-scale motor neuron recordings.Science advances · 2026Article
- Estimation of persistent inward currents contribution to inspiratory motoneuron firing in humans.The Journal of physiology · 2026Article
- Reverse engineering of motor unit discharge in multiple sclerosis reveals heterogeneity of voluntary motor commands.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Automating population construction and parallel simulation of biophysical models for neuromuscular cells: An inverse approach.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- The modulation of human motoneuron discharge patterns with contraction force in resistance- and endurance-trained individuals.Journal of applied physiology (Bethesda, Md. : 1985) · 2026Article
- Motor unit discharge properties are modestly influenced by menstrual cycle-related fluctuations in sex hormone concentrations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Motor unit discharge properties of the vastii muscles and their modulation with contraction level depend on the knee-joint angle.Journal of applied physiology (Bethesda, Md. : 1985) · 2026Article
- Pathophysiology of voluntary motor commands at the level of the spinal motoneuron in patients with multiple sclerosis.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Non-homogeneous distribution of inhibitory inputs among motor units in response to nociceptive stimulation at moderate contraction intensity.The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
- Intrinsic properties of spinal motoneurons degrade ankle torque control in humans.The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Relationships among motor unit discharge parameters used to estimate synaptic inputs to motoneurons.Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual International Conference · 2024Article
- Motor unit firing rate modulation is more impaired during flexion synergy-driven contractions of the biceps brachii in chronic stroke.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
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Abstract
In this study, we develop new reverse engineering (RE) techniques to identify the organization of the synaptic inputs generating firing patterns of populations of neurons. We tested these techniques in silico to allow rigorous evaluation of their effectiveness, using remarkably extensive parameter searches enabled by massively-parallel computation on supercomputers. We chose spinal motoneurons as our target neural system, since motoneurons process all motor commands and have well-established input-output properties. One set of simulated motoneurons was driven by 300,000+ simulated combinations of excitatory, inhibitory, and neuromodulatory inputs. Our goal was to determine if these firing patterns had sufficient information to allow RE identification of the input combinations. Like other neural systems, the motoneuron input-output system is likely non-unique. This non-uniqueness could potentially limit this RE approach, as many input combinations can produce similar outputs. However, our simulations revealed that firing patterns contained sufficient information to sharply restrict the solution space. Thus, our RE approach successfully generated estimates of the actual simulated patterns of excitation, inhibition, and neuromodulation, with variances accounted for ranging from 75-90%. It was striking that nonlinearities induced in firing patterns by the neuromodulation inputs did not impede RE, but instead generated distinctive features in firing patterns that aided RE. These simulations demonstrate the potential of this form of RE analysis. It is likely that the ever-increasing capacity of supercomputers will allow increasingly accurate RE of neuron inputs from their firing patterns from many neural systems.
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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.