Functional Coordination Control of Pairs of Antagonistic Muscles.

Abstract

The antagonistic pairs of mono- and bi-articular muscles of the upper extremity demonstrated perfectly coordinated muscular functions during arm push and pull movements with maximal effort in all round directions (360°) in the horizontal plane, which has been already observed in the sagittal plane through our experiments. Analysis of a proposed neural network suggested that the tightly coordinated functional patterns could be induced using only force direction information via the spinal level, and also that the tight coordination can be applied in mechanical engineering and robotics.