Association between effective neural drive to the triceps surae and fluctuations in plantar‐flexion torque during submaximal isometric contractions

New Findings What is the central question of this study? What is the association between the fluctuations in various estimates of effective neural drive to the triceps surae muscles and fluctuations in net plantar‐flexion torque during steady submaximal contractions? What is the main finding and its importance? The fluctuations in estimates of effective neural drive to the triceps surae were moderately correlated with fluctuations in net torque at light and moderate plantar‐flexion torques. Significant variability was observed in the association between neural drive and torque across participants, trials, short epochs of individual contractions and varying motor unit number. The influence of effective neural drive on low‐frequency fluctuations in torque during steady contractions can be estimated from the cumulative spike train (CST) or first principal component (FPC) of smoothed motor unit discharge rates obtained with high‐density electromyography. However, the association between these estimates of total neural drive to synergist muscles and the fluctuations in net torque has not been investigated. We exposed the variability and compared the correlations between estimates of effective neural drive to the triceps surae muscles and fluctuations in plantar‐flexion torque during steady contractions at 10% and 35% of maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) torque. Both neural drive estimates were moderately correlated with torque (CST, 0.55 ± 0.14; FPC, 0.58 ± 0.16) and highly correlated with one another (0.81 ± 0.1) during the 30‐s steady contractions. There was substantial variability in cross‐correlation values across participants, trials, and the 1‐ and 5‐s epochs of single contractions. Moreover, epoch duration significantly influenced cross‐correlation values. Motor unit number was weakly associated with cross‐correlation strength at 35% MVC (marginal R2 0.09–0.11; all P 0.37). Approximately, one‐fifth of the variance in the coefficient of variation (CV) for torque was explained by CV for the CST estimate of the neural drive (P = 6.6 × 10–13, R2 = 0.21). Estimates of total neural drive to the synergistic triceps surae muscles obtained by pooling motor unit discharge times were moderately correlated with fluctuations in net plantar‐flexion torque.