Motor Neuron synchronization reduces extraction capacity of common synaptic input

Previously, it has been shown that populations of spinal motor neurons (MN) can act as a linear system transmitting the common inputs they receive in a linear way to the the muscles. However, this transmission can be affected by the level of synchronization of sets of MN innervating a muscle. At present, the underlying mechanisms producing MN synchronization and their relation to the transmission of other signals are unclear. Here we propose a computational model to simulate different levels of MN synchronization and study how this synchronization affects the linear transmission of common inputs (information related to cortical processes) to the outputs (MN spike trains) and how this can be compensated using alternative methods to decode common neural inputs to MN pools.