ePoster

Modulation of brain commands and spinal pathways in human upper limb control in various gravity conditions; insights from neuromusculoskeletal simulation

Alice Bruel, Lina Bacha, Auke Ijspeert
FENS Forum 2024(2024)
Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Conference

FENS Forum 2024

Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Resources

Authors & Affiliations

Alice Bruel, Lina Bacha, Auke Ijspeert

Abstract

Humans can perform movements in various physical environments and various positions. The interaction of the musculoskeletal system, the neural system and the external environment is necessary to generate such movements. The neural system is itself comprised of several interactive components, from the brain mainly conducting motor planning, to the spinal cord (SC) implementing its own motor control centres through sensory reflexes. Nevertheless, it is unclear which modulation of the brain commands or of the spinal circuits can generate similar movements in various environments.Here, we addressed this question by focusing on upper limb motor control in various gravity conditions (magnitudes and directions) and using neuromusculoskeletal simulation tools. We integrated sinusoidal brain commends with a modular SC model controlling a musculoskeletal model. We first optimised the sinusoidal brain commands without SC and with a fixed SC model to reproduce a target elbow flexion trajectory in various gravity conditions. Then, we fixed the brain commands and optimised the spinal weights in the different environments.In the first scenario, the presence of SC resulted in easier optimisation of the brain commands (faster convergence and better performance). The main brain commands modulation was found in the sinusoid amplitude, resp. frequency, to adapt to different gravity magnitudes, resp. directions. In the second scenario, the modulation of the spinal weights also remarkably resulted in similar trajectories for the mild gravity changes.We thus highlighted that both strategies of modulation of the brain commands or SC can be considered to control movements in different gravity environments.

Unique ID: fens-24/modulation-brain-commands-spinal-pathways-4bb2537a