ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
Explaining human motor coordination via the synergy expansion hypothesis.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Comparative effects of physical education interventions on motor ability and executive function in junior high school students and their interrelationships.Frontiers in public health · 2026Trial
- Why inverse simulations overestimate optimal ankle exoskeleton assistance: the role of bi-articular coordination and joint stiffness.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2026Article
- The energetic cost of human standing balance and gait initiation over a range of natural postures.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Stabilizing stiffness is the most limiting factor in human force exertion.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Cyberlegs X-Leg at CYBATHLON 2024: insights on the control development of an active transfemoral prosthesis.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Insights into motor control: predict muscle activity from upper limb kinematics with LSTM networks.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A control engineering perspective on the advantages of efference copies.Biological cybernetics · 2025Article
- Neural control meets biomechanics in the motor assessment of neurological disorders: a narrative review.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2025Review
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The search for an answer to Bernstein's degrees of freedom problem has propelled a large portion of research studies in human motor control over the past six decades. Different theories have been developed to explain how humans might use their incredibly complex neuro-musculo-skeletal system with astonishing ease. Among these theories, motor synergies appeared as one possible explanation. In this work, the authors investigate the nature and role of synergies and propose a theoretical framework, namely the "expansion hypothesis," to answer Bernstein's problem. The expansion hypothesis is articulated in three propositions: mechanical, developmental, and behavioral. Each proposition addresses a different question on the nature of synergies: i) How many synergies can humans have? ii) How do we learn and develop synergies? iii) How do we use synergies? An example numerical simulation is presented and analyzed to clarify the hypothesis propositions. The expansion hypothesis is contextualized with respect to the existing literature on motor synergies both in healthy and impaired individuals, as well as other prominent theories in human motor control and development. The expansion hypothesis provides a framework to better comprehend and explain the nature, use, and evolution of human motor skills.
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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.