Muscle Synergies for Turning During Human Walking

Muscle synergy describes reduced set of functional muscle co-activation patterns. We aimed to identify muscle synergies of turning compared with straight walking. Twelve healthy adults (men: 7, women: 5) performed straight walking (SW), left turning (LT), and right turning (RT) at self-selected speeds. By using non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), we extracted muscle synergies from sixteen electromyography (EMG) signals on the right side and assigned similar muscle synergies among SW, LT, and RT into the same cluster by combining k-means clustering and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) analysis. We obtained task-specific clusters of muscle synergies extracted from SW, LT, or RT condition and identified the clusters that share synergies among the conditions. The central nervous system produces specific synergies involving turning behaviors and fundamental synergies for walking.