Plasticity of muscle synergies through fractionation and merging during development and training of human runners

Vincent C. K. Cheung; Ben M. F. Cheung; Janet H. Zhang; Zoe Y. S. Chan; Sophia C. W. Ha; Chao-Ying Chen; Roy T. H. Cheung

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-18210-4

Plasticity of muscle synergies through fractionation and merging during development and training of human runners

Vincent C. K. Cheung, Ben M. F. Cheung, Janet H. Zhang, Zoe Y. S. Chan, Sophia C. W. Ha, Chao-Ying Chen, Roy T. H. Cheung

Western Sydney University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

86 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Complex motor commands for human locomotion are generated through the combination of motor modules representable as muscle synergies. Recent data have argued that muscle synergies are inborn or determined early in life, but development of the neuromusculoskeletal system and acquisition of new skills may demand fine-tuning or reshaping of the early synergies. We seek to understand how locomotor synergies change during development and training by studying the synergies for running in preschoolers and diverse adults from sedentary subjects to elite marathoners, totaling 63 subjects assessed over 100 sessions. During development, synergies are fractionated into units with fewer muscles. As adults train to run, specific synergies coalesce to become merged synergies. Presences of specific synergy-merging patterns correlate with enhanced or reduced running efficiency. Fractionation and merging of muscle synergies may be a mechanism for modifying early motor modules (Nature) to accommodate the changing limb biomechanics and influences from sensorimotor training (Nurture).

Original language	English
Article number	4356
Number of pages	15
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	11
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18210-4
Publication status	Published - 2020

Open Access - Access Right Statement

Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/.

Keywords

muscles
runners (sports)
sensorimotor integration

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10.1038/s41467-020-18210-4

Cite this

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title = "Plasticity of muscle synergies through fractionation and merging during development and training of human runners",

abstract = "Complex motor commands for human locomotion are generated through the combination of motor modules representable as muscle synergies. Recent data have argued that muscle synergies are inborn or determined early in life, but development of the neuromusculoskeletal system and acquisition of new skills may demand fine-tuning or reshaping of the early synergies. We seek to understand how locomotor synergies change during development and training by studying the synergies for running in preschoolers and diverse adults from sedentary subjects to elite marathoners, totaling 63 subjects assessed over 100 sessions. During development, synergies are fractionated into units with fewer muscles. As adults train to run, specific synergies coalesce to become merged synergies. Presences of specific synergy-merging patterns correlate with enhanced or reduced running efficiency. Fractionation and merging of muscle synergies may be a mechanism for modifying early motor modules (Nature) to accommodate the changing limb biomechanics and influences from sensorimotor training (Nurture).",

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AU - Ha, Sophia C. W.

AU - Chen, Chao-Ying

AU - Cheung, Roy T. H.

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - Complex motor commands for human locomotion are generated through the combination of motor modules representable as muscle synergies. Recent data have argued that muscle synergies are inborn or determined early in life, but development of the neuromusculoskeletal system and acquisition of new skills may demand fine-tuning or reshaping of the early synergies. We seek to understand how locomotor synergies change during development and training by studying the synergies for running in preschoolers and diverse adults from sedentary subjects to elite marathoners, totaling 63 subjects assessed over 100 sessions. During development, synergies are fractionated into units with fewer muscles. As adults train to run, specific synergies coalesce to become merged synergies. Presences of specific synergy-merging patterns correlate with enhanced or reduced running efficiency. Fractionation and merging of muscle synergies may be a mechanism for modifying early motor modules (Nature) to accommodate the changing limb biomechanics and influences from sensorimotor training (Nurture).

AB - Complex motor commands for human locomotion are generated through the combination of motor modules representable as muscle synergies. Recent data have argued that muscle synergies are inborn or determined early in life, but development of the neuromusculoskeletal system and acquisition of new skills may demand fine-tuning or reshaping of the early synergies. We seek to understand how locomotor synergies change during development and training by studying the synergies for running in preschoolers and diverse adults from sedentary subjects to elite marathoners, totaling 63 subjects assessed over 100 sessions. During development, synergies are fractionated into units with fewer muscles. As adults train to run, specific synergies coalesce to become merged synergies. Presences of specific synergy-merging patterns correlate with enhanced or reduced running efficiency. Fractionation and merging of muscle synergies may be a mechanism for modifying early motor modules (Nature) to accommodate the changing limb biomechanics and influences from sensorimotor training (Nurture).

KW - muscles

KW - runners (sports)

KW - sensorimotor integration

UR - https://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:57957

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JO - Nature Communications

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Plasticity of muscle synergies through fractionation and merging during development and training of human runners

Abstract

Open Access - Access Right Statement

Keywords

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