Motor Neuron Pools of Synergistic Thigh Muscles Share Most of Their Synaptic Input

Overview

Journal J Neurosci

Specialty Neurology

Date 2015 Sep 5

PMID 26338331

Citations 59

Authors

Christopher M Laine

Eduardo Martinez-Valdes

Deborah Falla

Frank Mayer

Dario Farina

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Significance Statement: Precisely how the nervous system coordinates the activity of synergist muscles is not well understood. One possibility is that muscles of a synergy share a common neural drive. In this study, we directly compared the relative strength of shared versus independent neural drive to synergistically activated thigh muscles in humans. The results of this analysis support the notion that synergistically activated muscles share most of their neural drive. Scientifically, this study addressed an important gap in our current understanding of how neural drive is delivered to synergist muscles. We have also demonstrated the feasibility of a novel approach to the study of muscle synergies based on partial coherence analysis of motor unit activity.

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