Andrew Pruszynski

Motor synergies and the equilibrium-point hypothesis - PubMed The article offers a way to unite three recent developments in the field of motor control and coordination: (1) The notion of synergies is introduced based on the principle of motor abundance; (2) The uncontrolled manifold hypothesis is described as offering a computational framework to identify and …

I am just talking about his specific view on muscle synergies. Not EPH in general. Like he breaks it out here: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20702893/

For sure. I'm not saying there is no physiological constraints on coactivation patterns (we've studied these in stretch reflexes for example and they can get very functional). Just that not every coactivation pattern (perhaps even not many) reflect such constraints.

Wouldn't Latash basically agree (if you didn't say OFC our loud)?

Yeah different lingo aside I think I mostly agree with Latash's views on muscle synergies. Though it's been a while since I have looked.

Primate Upper Limb Muscles Exhibit Activity Patterns That Differ From Their Anatomical Action During a Postural Task | Journal of Neurophysiology | American Physiological Society The present study examined muscular activity in the primate proximal forelimb during a posture task. By applying loads selectively to the shoulder, elbow, or both joints, we observed that monoarticula...

Yeah, OFC or even simpler optimization schemes... like we showed here basically any cost function that penalizes energy gets you synergies because of multi-articular muscles. journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10....

The fact low dimensional patterns are often observed doesn't mean they are the organizing principle per se. Lots of synergy work actively confuses the analysis/description for the mechanism. Can get synergies (systematic muscle activation correlations) when optimizing a range of cost functions.

(in my opinion)

It depends on your specific hypothesis/question.

sufficient?

Synergies as description sure, synergies as mechanism no. The same is true 'manifolds' for neural activity.

You can find the link to the preprint here. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

YouTube video by Andrew Pruszynski Lucas Tian (Rockefellar)

In our latest superlab journal club, we hosted Lucas Tian (Rockefeller) who shared some his fascinating work investigating the neural basis of symbol compositionally. youtu.be/hCuUE7XEg8o

They can't learn to completely ignore hunger just like they can't learn to completely control some arbitrary neuron or set of neurons.

O_o

That's true but (a) preprints are a release valve and (b) IME, a lot of good important things happen in these final moments. What's a few weeks when good projects take years?

Sure, this is basically how I do it but ... perhaps outside the discussion, I really don't think this would save all that much time/effort on a study.

I add sentences until the paper says what it needs to say. Its not clear to me what the bullet points are ... are you imagining 5 bullets or 200?

What would a paper in bullet points actually mean? If your paper has sentences that are not simply not needed you can remove them now.

Wouldn't have predicted this. I have some reading to do!

Mental graphs structure the storage and retrieval of visuomotor associations - Nature Human Behaviour Trach and McDougle show that motor responses can form part of structured, graph-like memory representations.

You can find the paper itself here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

YouTube video by Andrew Pruszynski Juliana Trach (Yale University)

Excited to share our latest Sensorimotor Superlab Journal Club. Juliana Trach joins us to discuss her latest paper with @actlab.bsky.social, now published in @nathumbehav.nature.com: Mental graphs structure the storage and retrieval of visuomotor associations. youtu.be/6LlDYxDV8wo

This week's sensorimotor superlab reading list is out https://superlab.ca/posts/2025-11-14-list312.html @andpru.bsky.social @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social @gribblelab.org #neuroskyence #psychscisky #Sensorimotor

A brief rundown of our latest study by @arminpanjehpour.bsky.social.

A new paper from the lab featuring an elegant set of experiments to explore whether and how reaction times relate to sequence planning -- stellar work by @arminpanjehpour.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congratulations @northernthrux.bsky.social and team!

Come share your passion about motor control, sensory systems, neurophysiology, neurotechnology, and more at #NCMKobe26 !!

Cohen >> Buckley

Boo

Press release – U15 Canada welcomes study permit exemption for international graduate students | Alan Shepard Last September, I wrote about immigration changes that risked Canada losing valuable talent. It was a call for a smarter approach—one that balances infrastructure limits with the need to attract top g...

apparently also 'committed to processing PhD study permit applications in just 14 days.' www.linkedin.com/posts/alan-s...

Press release – U15 Canada welcomes study permit exemption for international graduate students | Alan Shepard Last September, I wrote about immigration changes that risked Canada losing valuable talent. It was a call for a smarter approach—one that balances infrastructure limits with the need to attract top g...

apparently also 'committed to processing PhD study permit applications in just 14 days.' www.linkedin.com/posts/alan-s...