When animals walk overground, mechanical stimuli activate various receptors located in
muscles, joints and skin. Afferents from these mechanoreceptors project to neuronal …

Driven by recent empirical studies, we offer a new understanding of the degrees of freedom
problem, and propose a refined concept of synergy as a neural organization that ensures a …

How rudimentary movements evolve into sophisticated ones during development remains
unclear. It is often assumed that the primitive patterns of neural control are suppressed …

Evidence suggests that the nervous system controls motor tasks using a low-dimensional
modular organization of muscle activation. However, it is not clear if such an organization …

Drawing on the disciplines of neurophysiology and physics, Neuromechanics of Human
Movement, Fourth Edition, explores how the nervous system controls the actions of muscles …

Despite distinct differences between walking and running, the two types of human
locomotion are likely to be controlled by shared pattern-generating networks. However, the …

Several recent studies have used matrix factorization algorithms to assess the hypothesis
that behaviors might be produced through the combination of a small number of muscle …

Little is known about the integration of neural mechanisms for balance and locomotion.
Muscle synergies have been studied independently in standing balance and walking, but …

There is much experimental evidence for the existence of biomechanical constraints which
simplify the problem of control of multi‐segment movements. In addition, it has been …

Muscle synergies provide a simple description of a complex motor control mechanism.
Synergies are extracted from muscle activation patterns using factorisation methods. Despite …