Motor unit mechanisms of speed control in mouse locomotion.
Overview
- Graduate Program in Biomedical Engineering, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, United States
- Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, United States
- Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract
During locomotion, the coordinated activity of dozens of muscles shapes the kinematic features of each stride, including systematic changes in limb movement across walking speed. Motor units, each of which consists of a single motor neuron and the muscle fibers it innervates, contribute to the total activation of each muscle through their recruitment and firing rate when active. However, it remains unknown how the nervous system controls locomotor speed by changing the firing of individual motor units. To address this, we combined quantitative behavioral analysis of mouse locomotion with single motor unit recordings from the lateral and long heads of the triceps brachii, which drive monoarticular extension of the elbow and biarticular movements of the elbow and shoulder, respectively. In contrast to prior studies employing bulk electromyography (EMG) to examine muscle activity, our recordings revealed the diversity of spike patterning across motor units, as well as systematic differences in motor unit activity across muscles and locomotor speeds. First, motor unit activity differed significantly across the lateral and long heads, suggesting differential control of these two closely apposed elbow extensor muscles. Second, we found that individual units were recruited probabilistically (during only a subset of strides), showing that the highly repeatable bulk EMG signals observed across strides, in fact, reflect varying subsets of individual motor units. Finally, although recruitment probability and firing rate both increased at faster walking speeds, increases in recruitment were proportionally larger than rate changes, and recruitment of individual units accompanied changes in limb kinematics. Together, these results reveal how the firing of individual motor units varies systematically across muscles and walking speeds to produce flexible locomotor behavior.
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
Code
The paper links to its data and to no code of its authors: see the Data section.
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Data
Datasets cited
- doi:10.5061/
dryad.wdbrv162w , at Dryad; found in DataCite
Data availability
A data archive including processed data and raw EMG/
The following dataset was generated:
Kyle T, Rhuna G, Hugo M. 2026. Data for: Motor unit mechanisms of speed control in mouse locomotion. Dryad Digital Repository.
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
Versions
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Version 1, 25 October 2026: the first record
Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, pages, dates, 5 authors, 1 keyword, 11 MeSH terms, 5 funders, 80 references.
Cite
This paper
Thomas, K., Gibbs, R., Marques, H., Carey, M. R., & Sober, S. J. (2026). Motor unit mechanisms of speed control in mouse locomotion. eLife, 14, RP105829. https://
BibTeX
@article{thomas2026motor
author = {Thomas, Kyle and Gibbs, Rhuna and Marques, Hugo and Carey, Megan R and Sober, Samuel J},
title = {{Motor unit mechanisms of speed control in mouse locomotion}},
journal = {eLife},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
volume = {14},
pages = {RP105829},
publisher = {eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd},
issn = {2050-084X},
doi = {10.7554/
url = {https://
pmid = {42910500},
pmcid = {PMC13690341}
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
AU - Thomas, Kyle
AU - Gibbs, Rhuna
AU - Marques, Hugo
AU - Carey, Megan R
AU - Sober, Samuel J
TI - Motor unit mechanisms of speed control in mouse locomotion
T2 - eLife
J2 - eLife
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/
VL - 14
SP - RP105829
SN - 2050-084X
PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
DO - 10.7554/
UR - https://
LA - en
ER -
CSL-JSON
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