The neural origin of muscle synergies

By Emilio Bizzi, V. Cheung. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 2013

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Muscle synergies are neural coordinative structures that function to alleviate the computational burden associated with the control of movement and posture. In this commentary, we address two critical questions: the explicit encoding of muscle synergies in the nervous system, and how muscle synergies simplify movement production. We argue that shared and task-specific muscle synergies are neurophysiological entities whose combination, orchestrated by the motor cortical areas and the afferent systems, facilitates motor control and motor learning.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/240eb40fd5db9bf5897e5e13efd74eee6bb2015d