A Whole-Body Musculoskeletal Model of the Mouse

Abstract

Neural control of movement cannot be fully understood without careful consideration of interactions between the neural and biomechanical components. Recent advancements in mouse molecular genetics allow for the identification and manipulation of constituent elements underlying the neural control of movement. To complement experimental studies and investigate the mechanisms by which the neural circuitry interacts with the body and the environment, computational models of motor behaviors in mice need to incorporate the corresponding model of the mouse musculoskeletal system. Here, we present the first fully articulated musculoskeletal model of the mouse. The mouse skeletal system has been developed from anatomical references and includes the sets of bones in all body compartments, including four limbs, spine, head and tail. Joints between all bones allow for simulation of full 3D mouse kinematics and kinetics. Hindlimb and forelimb musculature has been implemented using Hill-type muscle models. We analyzed the mouse whole-body model and described the moment-arms for different hindlimb and forelimb muscles, the moments applied by these muscles on the joints, and their involvement in limb movements at different limb/body configurations. The model represents a necessary step for the subsequent development of a comprehensive neuro-biomechanical model of freely behaving mice; this will close the loop between the neural control and the physical interactions between the body and the environment.

μSim: A goal-driven framework for elucidating the neural control of movement through musculoskeletal modeling

“…PyBullet is a fast, stable, and open source physics simulator with a python application programming interface (API). The authors of [73] developed a simulator-agnostic muscle library to be integrated with PyBullet for the purposes of this model. µ Sim controller interacts with the right forelimb of this model, directly activating its 18 muscles while the rest of the skeletal model is fixed in place.…”

A Real-time Control System of Upper-limb Human Musculoskeletal Model with Environmental Integration

“…l min and l max is the range of muscle length. The muscle length under force is calculated in Equation (6), where the value of B is calculated in Equation ( 8). The force velocity of the muscle is calculated from Equation (7), where v max , f v max , v are the maximum accepted muscle velocity, maximum of force muscle, and the normalized current muscle actuator velocity.…”

“…There are many simulations of human musculoskeletal models which are conceptually similar to each other [2]- [6]. They use human musculoskeletal with Hill-type muscle models [7], [8], while other simulations have been developed for animal musculoskeletal models [6], [9].…”

Deploying and Optimizing Embodied Simulations of Large-Scale Spiking Neural Networks on HPC Infrastructure

“…For the musculoskeletal system, we adapted a rodent simulation model that has been used in a stroke rehabilitation study in the Neurorobotics Platform recently (Vannucci et al, 2019 ; Allegra Mascaro et al, 2020 ). The skeleton thereof was modeled according to anatomical data and scans, and is an early version of the fully parameterized rodent model presented in Ramalingasetty et al ( 2021 ). We anchored the rodent body model to the experimental apparatus, leaving only three moving segments of the left forelimb capable of movement: humerus, ulna/radius and the foot.…”