Characterization of pathological tremor from motor unit spike trains

Abstract

Pathological tremor is the involuntary oscillation of a limb and is related to a diversity of diseases. Using a newly developed computational model for simulating surface EMG and complete discharge patterns of the motor unit population under the influence of neural oscillations in the central nervous system, the use of motor unit spike trains to characterize pathological tremor was investigated. Simulations were performed in 12 conditions, including different types of pathological tremor and varying levels of voluntary activity. The results showed that the cumulative spike trains of at least 5 motor units provided a better estimate of the central oscillations that it could be obtained from surface EMG in approximately 50% of the simulated conditions. In the remaining conditions there was no significant difference. The results indicate that motor unit spike trains constitute a useful signal for characterizing pathological tremor in vivo. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.