Control of arm movement using population of neurons

Movements of the human arm in a horizontal plane are very stereotyped in the sense that the corresponding paths are mainly straight lines and the velocity profiles are “bell-shaped like” functions. A dynamics of two link model of the human arm has been studied with the goal of synthesizing the torques which accomplish the desired transfer. The parameters of the desired trajectory, as well as the system variables, are encoded using populations of a different number of neurons. The driving torques are generated from the corresponding activities using an optimal decoding rule.