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 病态运动行为然而，我们对单个运动单位（肌肉纤维） 由单个运动神经元激活）模式，由于 当前肌电图（EMG）方法的局限性，包括插入肌肉的细导线， 最近，皮肤EMG阵列用于记录个体运动单位，特别是在人类受试者中。 然而，基于线的和皮肤的阵列都面临着关键的限制。值得注意的是，他们无法记录 介导精细运动控制的小肌肉和/或深层肌肉，由于导丝插入引起的组织损伤， 因为表面阵列无法监测来自深层肌肉的信号。此外，表面阵列具有有限的 在人类严格控制（例如等长力）任务之外使用，不适合长期使用， 自然行为或在康复环境中，在动物模型中表现不佳。最后是电极丝 通常只提供批量多单元记录（而不是单个单元尖峰序列）。在这个跨学科的 电生理学家（Sober博士）和电气工程师（Bakir博士）之间的建议，我们建议填补 通过创建新一代微尺度，高通道数EMG阵列来记录大量 在自然行为中，许多肌肉上的并行单单位数据。

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.