Abstract
There is an old saying that you must walk a mile in someone's shoes to truly understand them. This mini-review will synthesize and discuss recent research that attempts to make humans “walk a mile” in an artificial musculoskeletal system to gain insight into the principles governing human movement control. In this approach, electromyography (EMG) is used to sample human motor commands; these commands serve as inputs to mathematical models of muscular dynamics, which in turn act on a model of skeletal dynamics to produce a simulated motor action in real-time (i.e., the model's state is updated fast enough produce smooth motion without noticeable transitions; Manal et al., 2002). In this mini-review, these are termed myoelectric musculoskeletal models (MMMs). After a brief overview of typical MMM design and operation principles, the review will highlight how MMMs have been used for understanding human sensorimotor control and learning by evoking apparent alterations in a user's biomechanics, neural control, and sensory feedback experiences.
Highlights
Basic ComponentsAn essential component of an myoelectric musculoskeletal models (MMMs) is a musculoskeletal model: a mathematical representation of bones, muscles, and connective tissue
Reviewed by: Oliver Röhrle, University of Stuttgart, Germany Fady Alnajjar, RIKEN Brain Science Institute (BSI), Japan
A musculoskeletal model can be controlled on-line, such that a user interacts with the myoelectric musculoskeletal models (MMMs) in real-time
Summary
An essential component of an MMM is a musculoskeletal model: a mathematical representation of bones, muscles, and connective tissue. The model specifics depend on the application (Winters, 1995). More dynamically complex models may be needed for some applications, e.g., when considering complex muscle fiber architecture (Blemker and Delp, 2005; Heidlauf and Röhrle, 2014), stress and stress and strain distributions within bone (Huiskes and Chao, 1983), or the heterogeneity of fiber architecture within a muscle (Röhrle et al, 2017). As several comprehensive reviews are available on the possibilities for modeling the musculotendon system, the reader is pointed to the literature for more information (Zajac, 1988; Zajac and Winters, 1990; Neptune, 2000; Pandy, 2001; Viceconti et al, 2006)
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