The influence of biophysical muscle properties on simulating fast human arm movements

AbstractComputational modeling provides a framework to understand human movement control. For this approach, physiologically motivated and experimentally validated models are required to predict the dynamic interplay of the neuronal controller with the musculoskeletal biophysics. Previous studies show, that an adequate model of arm movements should consider muscle fiber contraction dynamics, parallel and serial elasticities, and activation dynamics. Numerous validated macroscopic model representations of these structures and processes exist. In this study, the influence of these structures and processes on maximum movement velocity of goal-directed arm movements was investigated by varying their mathematical model descriptions. It was found that the movement velocity strongly depends on the pre-activation of the muscles (differences up to 91.6%) and the model representing activation dynamics (differences up to 43.3%). Looking at the influence of the active muscle fibers (contractile element), the simulati...