Large-scale recording of spike train ensembles from muscle fibers during skilled behavior in mice and songbirds

运动神经科学中的一个关键问题是了解肌肉是如何被激活以产生正常或 病态的运动行为。然而，我们对单个运动单位(肌肉纤维)如何 由单个运动神经元激活)模式，它们的尖峰信号很难精确控制行为，这是因为 当前肌电(EMG)方法的局限性，包括插入肌肉的细丝和， 最近，皮肤肌电阵列被用来记录单个运动单位，特别是在人类受试者中。 然而，基于电线和皮肤的阵列都面临着严重的限制。值得注意的是，他们不能记录非常 小和/或深肌肉，介导精细运动控制，由于钢丝插入和组织损伤而引起 因为表面阵列无法监测来自深层肌肉的信号。此外，表面阵列有限 在人类严密控制(如等长力)任务之外使用，不适合在 在自然行为或康复环境中表现不佳，在动物模型中表现不佳。最后，线电极 通常只提供批量多单元记录(而不是单单元尖峰序列)。在这一交叉学科中 一位电生理学家(苏伯博士)和一位电气工程师(Bakir博士)之间的提案，我们建议填写 通过创造新一代微尺度、高通道计数的肌电阵列来大规模记录这一差距 在自然行为过程中跨多个肌肉的并行单单位数据。

A crucial problem in motor neuroscience is to understand how muscles are activated to produce normal or pathological motor behavior. However, our understanding of how individual motor units (the muscle fibers activated by a single motor neuron) pattern their spiking to precisely control behavior is poor due to the limitations of current electromyographic (EMG) methods, which include fine wires inserted into muscles and, more recently, cutaneous EMG arrays used to record individual motor units, particularly in human subjects. However, both wire-based and cutaneous arrays face crucial limitations. Notably, they cannot record the very small and/or deep muscles that mediate fine motor control, due to tissue damage induced by wire insertion and by surface array's inability to monitor signals from deeper muscles. Furthermore, surface arrays have limited use outside of tightly-controlled (e.g. isometric force) tasks in humans, are not appropriate for long-term use in natural behaviors or in rehabilitative contexts, and perform poorly in animal models. Finally, wire electrodes typically provide only bulk multiunit recording (rather than single-unit spike trains). In this cross-disciplinary proposal between an electrophysiologist (Dr. Sober) and an electrical engineer (Dr. Bakir), we propose to fill this gap by creating a new generation of micro-scale, high channel-count EMG arrays to record massively parallel single-unit data across many muscles during natural behaviors.