Speed-Dependent Modulation of Muscle Activity Based on Muscle Synergies during Treadmill Walking

Abstract

The regulation of walking speed is easily achieved. However, the central nervous system (CNS) must coordinate numerous muscles in order to achieve a smooth and continuous control of walking speed. To control walking speed appropriately, the CNS may need to utilize a simplified system for the control of numerous muscles. Previous studies have revealed that the CNS may control walking via muscle synergies that simplify the control of muscles by modularly organizing several muscles. We hypothesized that the CNS controls the walking speed by flexibly modulating activation of muscle synergies within one gait cycle. Then, we investigated how the activation of muscle synergies depend on walking speeds using the center of activity (CoA) that indicates the center of the distribution of activation timing within one gait cycle. Ten healthy men walked on a treadmill at 14 different walking speeds. We measured the surface electromyograms (EMGs) and kinematic data. Muscle synergies were extracted using non-negative matrix factorization. Then, we calculated the CoA of each muscle synergy. We observed that the CoA of each specific synergy would shift as the walking speed changed. The CoA that was mainly activated during the heel contact phase (C1) and the activation that contributed to the double support phase (C3) shifted to the earlier phase as the walking speed increased, whereas the CoA that produced swing initiation motion (C4) and the activation that related to the late-swing phase (C5) shifted to the later phase. This shifting of the CoA indicates that the CNS controls intensive activation of muscle synergies during the regulation of walking speed. In addition, shifting the CoA might be associated with changes in kinematics or kinetics depending on the walking speed. We concluded that the CNS flexibly controls the activation of muscle synergies in regulation of walking speed.

Muscle Synergies During Walking in Children With Cerebral Palsy: A Systematic Review

“…In addition, children with more severe types of CP generally walk slower compared to less affected and TD children. Walking speed is an important factor to consider when evaluating muscle synergies, as previous research found that both number and structure of synergies were affected by walking speed in healthy adults (Yokoyama et al, 2016 ; Kibushi et al, 2018 ) and TD children (Steele et al, 2015 ). These findings suggest that different walking speeds require different control from the central nervous system.…”

Patterns of lower limb muscular activity and joint moments during directional efforts using a static dynamometer

“…To assess and quantify the similarity between the normalized values of the eight muscle groups measured across the directions on the static dynamometer and the weight value of the muscular synergies previously measured during gait in a group of healthy individuals [12], cosine similarity was used and the highest value was selected for each synergy [26]. Muscle weightings were categorized as similar when the cosine similarities were over 0.71 (p < 0.01).…”

New Design Procedure of Transtibial ProsthesisBed Stump Using Topological Optimization Method

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