Modeling the potentiality of spinal-like circuitry for stabilization of a planar arm system.

The design of control systems for limb prostheses seems likely to benefit from an understanding of how sensorimotor integration is achieved in the intact system. Traditional BMIs guess what movement parameters are encoded by brain activity and then decode them to drive prostheses directly. Modeling the known structure and emergent properties of the biological decoder itself is likely to be more effective in bridging from normal brain activity to functionally useful limb movement.

Spinal-like regulator facilitates control of a two-degree-of-freedom wrist.

The performance of motor tasks requires the coordinated control and continuous adjustment of myriad individual muscles. The basic commands for the successful performance of a sensorimotor task originate in "higher" centers such as the motor cortex, but the actual muscle activation and resulting torques and motion are considerably shaped by the integrative function of the spinal interneurons. The relative contributions of brain and spinal cord are less clear for reaching movements than for automatic tasks such as locomotion.

Computationally efficient models of neuromuscular recruitment and mechanics.

We have improved the stability and computational efficiency of a physiologically realistic, virtual muscle (VM 3.*) model (Cheng et al 2000 J. Neurosci.