Topic: synthetic muscles

For motor control, the activities of local neural nets need to be coordinated, which can be attained via direct synaptic connections. Phylogenetically, the main purpose of the brain is the active interaction with the environment which suggests the presence of an alternative neural coordination mechanism, namely one that is mediated by a feedback loop involving the outside world. In this context we study the coordination of otherwise isolated neural clusters via 'force coupling', viz exclusively through the reactive forces of the body. Coordination arises when a given neural net reacts to the