Abstract The muscle synergy model is a low-dimensional structure in which nerves produce and control motion. The aim of this work was to study whether the coherence of surface electromyography could reflect the synergy-coupling relationship of the muscle groups under different movements and reveal the laws of movement generation and execution from the point of neural control and muscle coordination. In this study, we chose eight young healthy subjects (4 men and 4 women, 20～24 years old) to perform the upper limb wrist flexion and extension experiments, the sEMG data from different muscle groups were collected during the action. This study analyzed synergy between muscles bynonnegative matrix factorization. The coherence analysis method was used to study intermuscular coupling relationship in the beta (15~35 Hz) and gamma (35~60 Hz) band with the signals of high synergy muscles, and the differences of synergy-coupling between different subjects under wrist flexion and extension were investigated. Results showed that active muscles of extensor carpi radialis (ECR), extensor digitorum (ED), extensor carpi ulnaris (ECU) and brachioradialis (B) had synergistic relationship in synergy model W5 under the wrist extension movement, the intensity of intermuscular coupling was significantly different (P<0.05), and there was a significant difference in the value of coherence area between beta and gamma band (1.261±0.966). In the wrist flexion movement, intermuscular synergy appeared in synergy models W1 W4 W5, the intensity of intermuscular coupling was significantly different (P<0.001), and there was a nuance in the value of coherence area between beta and gamma band (0.412±0.163), active muscles of flexor carpi radialis (FCR) and flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS) had no synergistic relationship, the intermuscular coupling relationship was small. Taken above together, there were differences in the neural control action, which showed the different intermuscular synergy-coupling relationship. In the same synergy model, the intermuscular coupling relationship with high synergism was stronger. It revealed the law of the neural control action and muscle interaction with each other. The proposed method was expected to be applied in the future to reveal the central nervous system of modular synergistic control mechanism of movement, and to provide scientific basis for functional analysis and evaluation of patients with movement disorders.
Xie Ping,Li Xinxin,Yang Chunhua, et al. Research on the Intermuscular Synergy and Coupling Analysis Based on Surface EMG Nonnegative Matrix Factorization-Coherence[J]. Chinese Journal of Biomedical Engineering, 2017, 36(2): 150-157.
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