New publication on muscle synergy adaptation during movement learning

We are pleased to announce that our second paper on muscle synergy has recently been published! In this paper, Paul Kaufmann, Willi Koller, Elias Wallnöfer, Basilio Goncalves, Arnold Baca and Hans Kainz focused on the question of how motor control changes during a learning process. Briefly, participants walked on the ground, over a beam and learned to walk on a tightrope – all within one data collection session. Muscle synergies were then extracted from surface electromyography signals and compared between the different levels of movement proficiency. Our results showed that the fine-tuning of muscle synergy activation coefficients is crucial for movement learning. Their trial-to-trial similarity increases with higher levels of movement proficiency and during learning, which fits well with reinforcement learning theories. In addition, the temporal overlap is higher for movements with low proficiency, which is likely a strategy of the central nervous system to promote robust motor control. The paper has been published in Scientific Reports and is open access: Increased trial-to-trial similarity and reduced temporal overlap of muscle synergy activation coefficients manifest during learning and with increasing movement proficiency