Motoneuron-driven computational muscle modelling with motor unit resolution and subject-specific musculoskeletal anatomy
Authors: Caillet Arnault H. , Phillips Andrew T.M. , Farina Dario , Modenese Luca 
Published: June 2023

The computational simulation of human voluntary muscle contraction is possible with EMG-driven Hill-type models of whole muscles. Despite impactful applications in numerous fields, the neuromechanical information and the physiological accuracy such models provide remain limited because of multiscale simplifications that limit comprehensive description of muscle internal dynamics during contraction. We addressed this limitation by developing a novel motoneuron-driven neuromuscular model, that describes the force-generating dynamics of a population of individual motor units, each of which was described with a Hill-type actuator and controlled by a dedicated experimentally derived motoneuronal control. In forward simulation of human voluntary muscle contraction, the model transforms a vector of motoneuron spike trains decoded from high-density EMG signals into a vector of motor unit forces that sum into the predicted whole muscle force. The control of motoneurons provides comprehensive and separate descriptions of the dynamics of motor unit recruitment and discharge and decode the subject’s intention. The neuromuscular model is subject-specific, muscle-specific, includes an advanced and physiological description of motor unit activation dynamics, and is validated against an experimental muscle force. Accurate force predictions were obtained when the vector of experimental neural controls was representative of the discharge activity of the complete motor unit pool. This was achieved with large and dense grids of EMG electrodes during medium-force contractions or with computational methods that physiologically estimate the discharge activity of the motor units that were not identified experimentally. This neuromuscular model advances the state-of-the-art of neuromuscular modelling, bringing together the fields of motor control and musculoskeletal modelling, and finding applications in neuromuscular control and human-machine interfacing research.

Author Summary

Neuromuscular computational simulations of human muscle contractions are typically obtained with a mathematical model that transforms an electromyographic signal recorded from the muscle into force. This single-input single-output approach, however, limits the comprehensive description of muscle internal dynamics during contraction because of necessary multiscale simplifications. Here, we advance the state-of-the-art in neuromuscular modelling by proposing a novel mathematical model that describes the force-generating dynamics of the individual motor units that constitute the muscle. For the first time, the control to the population of modelled motor units was inferred from decomposed high-density electromyographic signals. The model was experimentally validated, and the sensitivity of its predictions to different experimental neural controls was assessed. The neuromuscular model, coupled with an image-based musculoskeletal model, includes a novel and advanced neuromechanical model of the motor unit excitation-contraction properties, and is suited for subject-specific simulations of human voluntary contraction, with applications in neurorehabilitation and the control of neuroprosthetics.