Abstract
Abstract The optimality principles underlying neuromuscular control have until very recently received comparatively little attention from the biocybernetist, although their investigation represents an extremely interesting and rewarding field of research. This apparent lack of interest is surprising in two respects. First, there exists a vast literature on the phenomenology of neuromuscular behavior, based on data collected by a great many experimental biologists. Second, control theory has advanced to such an extent that it has become possible to treat, from a control point of view, highly complex and nonlinear biosystems subject to severe constraints. It is possible that workers have been discouraged by the lack of an appropriate control model of (skeletal) muscle which would contain the equivalents to the actual neural controls, firing frequency and number of motor units recruited, and be capable of predicting a vast variety of known phenomena of muscular contraction. This paper is devoted to the brief description of such a general myo-cybernetic control model of skeletal muscle and to the application of this model in the investigation of certain modes of optimal neuromuscular behavior.
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