Force estimation from ensembles of Golgi tendon organs

Golgi tendon organs (GTOs) located in the skeletal muscles provide the central nervous system with information about muscle tension. The ensemble firing of all GTO receptors in the muscle has been hypothesized to represent a reliable measure of the whole muscle force but the precision and accuracy of that information are largely unknown because it is impossible to record activity simultaneously from all GTOs in a muscle. In this study, we combined a new mathematical model of force sampling and transduction in individual GTOs with various models of motor unit (MU) organization and recruitment simulating various normal, pathological and neural prosthetic conditions. Our study suggests that in the intact muscle the ensemble GTO activity accurately encodes force information according to a nonlinear, monotonic relationship that has its steepest slope for low force levels and tends to saturate at the highest force levels. The relationship between the aggregate GTO activity and whole muscle tension under some pathological conditions is similar to one seen in the intact muscle during rapidly modulated, phasic excitation of the motor pool (typical for many natural movements) but quite different when the muscle is activated slowly or held at a given force level. Substantial deviations were also observed during simulated functional electrical stimulation.