Bio-mechanical characterisation of synergistic muscle control in goal directed movements
Name
57303898-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
3.53 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
13ffa29d3bfec6445dab8bee6d704e09
Author(s)
Doutriaux, Timothée, 1980-
Advisor(s)
Emilio Bizzi and Andrea d'Avella.
Alternative Title
Bio-mechanical characterization of synergistic muscle control in goal directed movements
Date Issued
2004
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
The generation of skilled movement requires the coordinated activation of muscles to produce precise muscle forces and joint torques. The co-ordination of muscles, acting on multi-joint limbs and characterised by highly non-linear dynamics, requires significant computational effort. The synergistic control hypothesis suggests that the nervous system may simplify the required computations by producing movements through the coordinated activation of a limited number of movement building blocks, termed muscle synergies. To evaluate how synergistic control may be used to produce the variety of kinematic behaviours observed in vivo, we developed two algorithms to identify sets of muscles whose linear combinations can be used to reproduce the range of joint-torque profiles recorded in vivo. Sets of two to three synergies accounted for 71.9% to 89% of the variance in the torque data--depending on the time-structure imposed on the synergies. Small numbers of synergies were sufficient to reconstruct the data because of the high degree of correlation between the hip and knee joint-torques required to produce both natural and artificial behaviours. Dynamic properties of the limb act to increase the correlation between hip and knee extension torques, and between hip and knee flexion torques. The structure of the musculoskeletal system of the limb and the structure of the extracted muscle synergies both act to produce muscle-torque combinations that counter- act the dynamic properties of the limb.
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-71).
Subjects
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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