Muscle synergies are associated with intermuscular coherence in an isometric upper limb task.

To elucidate the underlying physiological mechanism of muscle synergies, we investigated the functional corticomuscular and intermuscular binding during an isometric upper limb task in 14 healthy participants. Cortical activity was recorded using 32-channel encephalography (EEG) and muscle activity using 16-channel electromyography (EMG). Using non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), we calculated muscle synergies from two different tasks. A preliminary multidirectional task was used to identify synergy preferred directions. A subsequent coherence task, consisting of generating forces isometrically in the synergy PDs, was used to assess the functional connectivity properties of synergies. Functional connectivity was estimated using corticomuscular coherence (CMC) and intermuscular coherence (IMC). Overall, we were able to extract four different synergies from the multidirectional task. A significant alpha band IMC was present consistently in all extracted synergies. Moreover, alpha band IMC was higher between muscles with higher weights within a synergy. In contrast, no significant CMC was found between the motor cortex area and synergy muscles. In addition, there is a relationship between a synergy muscle weight and the level of IMC. Our findings suggest the existence of a consistent shared input between muscles of each synergy. Finally, the existence of a shared input onto synergistic muscles within a synergy supports the idea of neurally-derived muscle synergies that build human movement.