Empirical Evaluation of Voluntarily Activatable Muscle Synergies.

ABSTRACT: The muscle synergy hypothesis assumes that individual muscle synergies are independent of each other and voluntarily controllable. However, this assumption has not been empirically tested. This study tested if human subjects can voluntarily activate individual muscle synergies extracted by non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), the standard mathematical method for synergy extraction. We defined the activation of a single muscle synergy as the generation of a muscle activity pattern vector parallel to the single muscle synergy vector. Subjects performed an isometric force production task with their right hand, and the 13 muscle activity patterns associated with their elbow and shoulder movements were measured. We extracted muscle synergies during the task using electromyogram (EMG) data a

SUBMITTER: Togo S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5592215 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature