A collaborative research group led by Professor Shinya Aoi of the Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University has mathematically clarified the control mode of the cranial nerves for humans to walk and run from research using mathematical models of the cranial nerves, muscles, and skeletal systems. I made it.
The human body has many muscles and joints, and the cranial nerves control this complex structure well to enable walking, running, and various exercises.At that time, the cranial nerves do not control many muscles individually, but prepare multiple combinations of muscles and activity patterns according to exercise, and control through them to simplify the control structure. A concept called "muscle synergy" that reduces the load has been proposed.
This research group performed a kinetic simulation that integrates a cranial nerve control model and a musculoskeletal model based on this muscle synergy.As a result, a movement with significantly different behaviors of walking and running was realized by slightly changing the combination of muscles and the nature of the activity pattern.Furthermore, it was also found that the speed can be changed within a certain range in both walking and running by simply changing the control parameters of the above pattern.
This result gives important implications for the existence of still controversial muscle synergies, such as the development of sports science such as improvement of athletic ability and coaching, the medical field such as the development of rehabilitation methods, and the control of exoskeleton robots. It is expected to contribute to the development of exercise support technology.
