Diverse and complex muscle spindle afferent firing properties emerge from multiscale muscle mechanics.

ABSTRACT: Despite decades of research, we lack a mechanistic framework capable of predicting how movement-related signals are transformed into the diversity of muscle spindle afferent firing patterns observed experimentally, particularly in naturalistic behaviors. Here, a biophysical model demonstrates that well-known firing characteristics of mammalian muscle spindle Ia afferents - including movement history dependence, and nonlinear scaling with muscle stretch velocity - emerge from first principles of muscle contractile mechanics. Further, mechanical interactions of the muscle spindle with muscle-tendon dynamics reveal how motor commands to the muscle (alpha drive) versus muscle spindle (gamma drive) can cause highly variable and complex activity during active muscle contraction and muscle stretc

SUBMITTER: Blum KP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7769569 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature