Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

4-2013

Publication Source

11th International Symposium on Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering

Abstract

This study investigates whether use of subject-specific muscle synergies can improve optimization predictions of muscle excitation patterns and knee contact forces during walking. Muscle synergies describe how a small number of neural commands generated by the nervous system can be linearly combined to produce the broad range of muscle electromyographic (EMG) signals measured experimentally. By quantifying the interdependence of individual EMG signals, muscle synergies provide dimensionality reduction for the neural control redundancy problem. Our hypothesis was that use of subjectspecific muscle synergies to limit muscle excitation patterns would improve prediction of muscle EMG patterns at the hip, knee, and ankle and of contact forces at the knee using a subject-specific lower body musculoskeletal computer model. The predictions were evaluated against in vivo experimental data collected from a subject implanted with a force-measuring tibial prosthesis.

Document Version

Published Version

Comments

The document available for download is the authors' published abstract, posted here pending permission from the publisher. Permission documentation is on file.

This work was funded by NIH grant R01EB009351, the Shiley Center for Orthopaedic Research & Education at Scripps Clinic, and the University of Florida.

Publisher

University of Utah

Place of Publication

Salt Lake City, UT

Peer Reviewed

yes


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