Computational Models of Motor Pools

Definition

The motor unit comprises the motoneuron, its axon, and all the muscle fibers innervated by the axon’s terminal branches (Heckman and Enoka 2012). The muscle fibers for one motor unit are sometimes referred to as the muscle unit. Each muscle is innervated by a pool of motoneurons in the ventral portion of the spinal cord or, for the face and neck, in the brainstem. Thus, the motor unit pool comprises all the motoneurons in one motor nucleus and the muscle innervated by those motoneurons. In contrast, a motor pool only includes the motoneurons.

Detailed Description

The motor unit pool has long been an appealing target for computational modeling of a neural network. Efforts at modeling this fundamentally important system date back more than 50 years, to Wilfred Rall’s early interest in the input–output relations of the monosynaptic reflex arc (Rall 1955). But the system is inherently a neuromechanical one and the first models of motor unit pools in the 1960s and 1970s,...