Association between the motor units and the central pattern generator in terms of the synaptic connection

Abstract

Biological experiments have confirmed that the locomotion system includes the nervous and musculoskeletal systems, and central pattern generator (CPG). The motor unit (MU) is the core part of the musculoskeletal system. Based on the biological experiments, it is confirmed that the CPG can generate and distribute the motor rhythms and patterns to different MUs through flexible weights, and the MUs feedback can affect the output of CPG. Then, the MU model, the CPG model, and their coupling model are investigated to explain the biological phenomena. Within this work, it was found that there is consistency between the shape of states generated by the three MUs in this work and the experimental results in previous studies. When the MUs correspond to the parts in limbs, and the CPG connects to the MUs via synapses, the locomotion pattern can be adjusted by CPG to use the variable synaptic weights. Besides, the model with fractional order (FO) has better efficiency than the model with integer order. Therefore, the model investigates the relationship between the CPG and the MU and provides a novel technique to introduce the FO coupling model for controlling the locomotion state.