Distributed moment histogram: A neurophysiology based method of agonist and antagonist trunk muscle activity prediction

A neurocortical-based technique of muscle recruitment is presented to solve the muscle indeterminacy problem for lumbar torso modeling. Cortical recordings from behaving primates have established motor cortex cells that respond to a wide range of task directions, but are tuned to a preferred direction. A characteristic activity pattern of these neurons seems to be associated with effort direction. It was hypothesized that a model which recruits muscles based on a similar distribution would predict antagonistic muscle activity with greater realism than a widely referenced optimization formulation. The predictions of the Distributed Moment Histogram (DMH) method were evaluated under common speed (