Analysis of bilateral muscle coordination for characterizing neuromuscular function in postural control

Coordination between legs is necessary to complete bipedal balance task goals. Assessing bilateral homonymous muscle coordination may provide insight into the inherent neuromuscular control of the two legs in achieving equilibrium. This work introduced a method based on a normalized cross-correlation analysis to analyze bilateral homonymous muscle coordination during bipedal balancing on different support surfaces, revealing the temporal similarity in shape (i.e., form) between two electromyographic (EMG) signals (i.e., EMG-EMG correlation). Two levels of EMG-EMG correlation were considered: individual homonymous muscles and groups (patterns) of homonymous muscles relevant to the current task. In order to analyze the patterns of homonymous muscles, a principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to the cross-correlation coefficients to provide insights into functionally specialized groups of homonymous muscles constrained by the nervous system to work cooperatively. This proposed method has advantages that can be applied to several purposes. For example,•Analyzing the EMG-EMG correlation provides essential information about the inherent neuromuscular function in postural control.•At the level of individual homonymous muscles, this method can be applied to assess the neuromuscular performance after injury to the specific muscles.•At the level of multiple homonymous muscles, this method can be used to monitor the cooperative work of several pairs of homonymous muscles in achieving equilibrium.