Cabral Hélio V, Cudicio Alessandro, Bonardi Alberto, Del Vecchio Alessandro, Falciati Luca, Orizio Claudio, Martinez-Valdes Eduardo, Negro Francesco
Department of Clinical and Experimental Sciences, Università degli Studi di Brescia, Brescia 25123, Italy.
Department Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen 91052, Germany.
eNeuro. 2024 Jul 17;11(7). doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0043-24.2024. Print 2024 Jul.
The acquisition of a motor skill involves adaptations of spinal and supraspinal pathways to alpha motoneurons. In this study, we estimated the shared synaptic contributions of these pathways to understand the neural mechanisms underlying the short-term acquisition of a new force-matching task. High-density surface electromyography (HDsEMG) was acquired from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI; 7 males and 6 females) and tibialis anterior (TA; 7 males and 4 females) during 15 trials of an isometric force-matching task. For two selected trials (pre- and post-skill acquisition), we decomposed the HDsEMG into motor unit spike trains, tracked motor units between trials, and calculated the mean discharge rate and the coefficient of variation of interspike interval (COV). We also quantified the post/pre ratio of motor units' coherence within delta, alpha, and beta bands. Force-matching improvements were accompanied by increased mean discharge rate and decreased COV for both muscles. Moreover, the area under the curve within alpha band decreased by ∼22% (TA) and ∼13% (FDI), with no delta or beta bands changes. These reductions correlated significantly with increased coupling between force/neural drive and target oscillations. These results suggest that short-term force-matching skill acquisition is mediated by attenuation of physiological tremor oscillations in the shared synaptic inputs. Supported by simulations, a plausible mechanism for alpha band reductions may involve spinal interneuron phase-cancelling descending oscillations. Therefore, during skill learning, the central nervous system acts as a matched filter, adjusting synaptic weights of shared inputs to suppress neural components unrelated to the specific task.
运动技能的习得涉及脊髓和脊髓上通路对α运动神经元的适应性变化。在本研究中,我们估计了这些通路共同的突触贡献,以了解新的力匹配任务短期习得背后的神经机制。在等长力匹配任务的15次试验中,从第一背侧骨间肌(FDI;7名男性和6名女性)和胫骨前肌(TA;7名男性和4名女性)采集高密度表面肌电图(HDsEMG)。对于两个选定的试验(技能习得前和习得后),我们将HDsEMG分解为运动单位放电序列,在试验之间追踪运动单位,并计算平均放电率和峰间期变异系数(COV)。我们还量化了运动单位在δ、α和β频段内相干性的后/前比值。两块肌肉的力匹配改善都伴随着平均放电率增加和COV降低。此外,α频段内的曲线下面积在TA中下降了约22%,在FDI中下降了约13%,δ或β频段没有变化。这些减少与力/神经驱动和目标振荡之间耦合的增加显著相关。这些结果表明,短期力匹配技能的习得是由共享突触输入中生理震颤振荡的衰减介导的。在模拟的支持下,α频段减少的一个合理机制可能涉及脊髓中间神经元对下行振荡的相位抵消。因此,在技能学习过程中,中枢神经系统充当一个匹配滤波器,调整共享输入的突触权重以抑制与特定任务无关的神经成分。