Interpretation of Muscle Spindle Afferent Nerve Response to Passive Muscle Stretch Recorded With Thin-Film Longitudinal Intrafascicular Electrodes

In this study, we explored the feasibility of estimating muscle length in passive conditions by interpreting nerve responses from muscle spindle afferents recorded with thin-film longitudinal intrafascicular electrodes. Afferent muscle spindle response to passive stretch was recorded in ten acute rabbit experiments. A newly proposed first-order model of muscle spindle response to passive sinusoidal muscle stretch manages to capture the relationship between afferent neural firing rate and muscle length. We demonstrate that the model can be used to track random motion trajectories with bandwidth from 0.1 to 1 Hz over a range of 4 mm with a muscle length estimation error of 0.3 mm (1.4deg of joint angle). When estimation is performed using four-channel ENG there is a 50% reduction in estimate variation, compared to using single-channel recordings.