Closed-loop coupling of both physiological spindle model and spinal pathways for sensorimotor control of human center-out reaching
The development of new studies that consider different structures of the hierarchical sensorimotor control system is essential to enable a more holistic understanding about movement. The incorporation of more biological proprioceptive and neuronal circuit models to muscles can turn neuromusculoskele...
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2025-08-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2025.1575630/full |
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| author | Pablo Filipe Santana Chacon Isabell Wochner Isabell Wochner Maria Hammer Jochen Martin Eppler Susanne Kunkel Susanne Kunkel Syn Schmitt Syn Schmitt Syn Schmitt |
| author_facet | Pablo Filipe Santana Chacon Isabell Wochner Isabell Wochner Maria Hammer Jochen Martin Eppler Susanne Kunkel Susanne Kunkel Syn Schmitt Syn Schmitt Syn Schmitt |
| author_sort | Pablo Filipe Santana Chacon |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The development of new studies that consider different structures of the hierarchical sensorimotor control system is essential to enable a more holistic understanding about movement. The incorporation of more biological proprioceptive and neuronal circuit models to muscles can turn neuromusculoskeletal systems more appropriate to investigate and elucidate motor control. Specifically, further studies that consider the closed-loop between proprioception and central nervous system may allow to better understand the yet open question about the importance of afferent feedback for sensorimotor learning and execution in the intact biological system. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the processing of spindle afferent firings by spiking neuronal network and their relevance for sensorimotor control. We integrated our previously published physiological model of the muscle spindle in a biological arm model, corresponding to a musculoskeletal system able to reproduce biological motion inside of the demoa multi-body simulation framework. We coupled this musculoskeletal system to physiologically-motivated neuronal spinal pathways, which were implemented based on literature in the NEST spiking neural network simulator, intended to perform human center-out reaching arising from spinal synaptic learning. As result, the spindle connections to the spinal neurons were strengthened for the more difficult targets (i.e. higher above placed targets) under perturbation, highlighting the importance of spindle proprioception to succeed in more difficult scenarios. Furthermore, an additionally-implemented simpler spinal network (that does not include the pathways with spindle proprioception) presented an inferior performance in the task by not being able to reach all the evaluated targets. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-68e4af1bedad4383873f30f4b3f00e9e |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1662-5188 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-08-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience |
| spelling | doaj-art-68e4af1bedad4383873f30f4b3f00e9e2025-08-26T05:27:53ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience1662-51882025-08-011910.3389/fncom.2025.15756301575630Closed-loop coupling of both physiological spindle model and spinal pathways for sensorimotor control of human center-out reachingPablo Filipe Santana Chacon0Isabell Wochner1Isabell Wochner2Maria Hammer3Jochen Martin Eppler4Susanne Kunkel5Susanne Kunkel6Syn Schmitt7Syn Schmitt8Syn Schmitt9Institute for Modelling and Simulation of Biomechanical Systems, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, GermanyHertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, GermanyCenter for Bionic Intelligence Tübingen-Stuttgart (BITS), Tübingen-Stuttgart, GermanyInstitute for Modelling and Simulation of Biomechanical Systems, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, GermanyFaculty of Science and Technology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, NorwayFaculty of Science and Technology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, NorwayPeter Grünberg Institute (PGI-15), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, GermanyInstitute for Modelling and Simulation of Biomechanical Systems, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, GermanyCenter for Bionic Intelligence Tübingen-Stuttgart (BITS), Tübingen-Stuttgart, GermanyStuttgart Center for Simulation Science, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, GermanyThe development of new studies that consider different structures of the hierarchical sensorimotor control system is essential to enable a more holistic understanding about movement. The incorporation of more biological proprioceptive and neuronal circuit models to muscles can turn neuromusculoskeletal systems more appropriate to investigate and elucidate motor control. Specifically, further studies that consider the closed-loop between proprioception and central nervous system may allow to better understand the yet open question about the importance of afferent feedback for sensorimotor learning and execution in the intact biological system. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the processing of spindle afferent firings by spiking neuronal network and their relevance for sensorimotor control. We integrated our previously published physiological model of the muscle spindle in a biological arm model, corresponding to a musculoskeletal system able to reproduce biological motion inside of the demoa multi-body simulation framework. We coupled this musculoskeletal system to physiologically-motivated neuronal spinal pathways, which were implemented based on literature in the NEST spiking neural network simulator, intended to perform human center-out reaching arising from spinal synaptic learning. As result, the spindle connections to the spinal neurons were strengthened for the more difficult targets (i.e. higher above placed targets) under perturbation, highlighting the importance of spindle proprioception to succeed in more difficult scenarios. Furthermore, an additionally-implemented simpler spinal network (that does not include the pathways with spindle proprioception) presented an inferior performance in the task by not being able to reach all the evaluated targets.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2025.1575630/fullmuscle spindlespinal cordneuromusculoskeletal modelspiking neural networkproprioceptionsensorimotor control |
| spellingShingle | Pablo Filipe Santana Chacon Isabell Wochner Isabell Wochner Maria Hammer Jochen Martin Eppler Susanne Kunkel Susanne Kunkel Syn Schmitt Syn Schmitt Syn Schmitt Closed-loop coupling of both physiological spindle model and spinal pathways for sensorimotor control of human center-out reaching Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience muscle spindle spinal cord neuromusculoskeletal model spiking neural network proprioception sensorimotor control |
| title | Closed-loop coupling of both physiological spindle model and spinal pathways for sensorimotor control of human center-out reaching |
| title_full | Closed-loop coupling of both physiological spindle model and spinal pathways for sensorimotor control of human center-out reaching |
| title_fullStr | Closed-loop coupling of both physiological spindle model and spinal pathways for sensorimotor control of human center-out reaching |
| title_full_unstemmed | Closed-loop coupling of both physiological spindle model and spinal pathways for sensorimotor control of human center-out reaching |
| title_short | Closed-loop coupling of both physiological spindle model and spinal pathways for sensorimotor control of human center-out reaching |
| title_sort | closed loop coupling of both physiological spindle model and spinal pathways for sensorimotor control of human center out reaching |
| topic | muscle spindle spinal cord neuromusculoskeletal model spiking neural network proprioception sensorimotor control |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2025.1575630/full |
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