Theoretical Model and Experimental Validation of the estimated proportions of common and independent input to motor neurons

Abstract

Motor neurons in the spinal cord receive synaptic input that comprises common and independent components. The part of synaptic input that is common to all motor neurons is the one regulating the production of force. Therefore, its quantification is important to assess the strategy used by Central Nervous System (CNS) to control and regulate movements, especially in physiological conditions such as fatigue. In this study we present and validate a method to estimate the ratio between strengths of common and independent inputs to motor neurons and we apply this method to investigate its changes during fatigue. By means of coherence analysis we estimated the level of correlation between motor unit spike trains at the beginning and at the end of fatiguing contractions of the Tibialis Anterior muscle at three different force targets. Combining theoretical modeling and experimental data we estimated the strength of the common synaptic input with respect to the independent one. We observed a consistent increase in the proportion of the shared input to motor neurons during fatigue. This may be interpreted as a strategy used by the CNS to counteract the occurrence of fatigue and the concurrent decrease of generated force.