{"doi":"10.3389/fphys.2023.1183492","title":"Edge Computing in Nature: Minimal pre-processing of multi-muscle ensembles of spindle signals improves discriminability of limb movements","abstract":"Multiple proprioceptive signals, like those from muscle spindles, are thought to enable robust estimates of body configuration. Yet, it remains unknown whether spindle signals suffice to discriminate limb movements. Here, a simulated 4-musculotendon, 2-joint planar limb model produced repeated cycles of five end-point trajectories in forward and reverse directions, which generated spindle Ia and II afferent signals (proprioceptors for velocity and length, respectively) from each musculotendon. We find that cross-correlation of the 8D time series of raw firing rates (four Ia, four II) cannot discriminate among most movement pairs (∼ 29% accuracy). However, projecting these signals onto their 1 st and 2 nd principal components greatly improves discriminability of movement pairs (82% accuracy). We conclude that high-dimensional ensembles of muscle proprioceptors can discriminate among limb movements—but only after dimensionality reduction. This may explain the pre-processing of some afferent signals before arriving at the somatosensory cortex, such as processing of cutaneous signals at the cat’s cuneate nucleus.","journal":"Frontiers in Physiology","year":2023,"id":380970,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9532,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":568913,"name":"Ali Marjaninejad","orcid":"0000-0001-6943-151X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":422659,"name":"Francisco J. Valero‐Cuevas","orcid":"0000-0002-2611-7923","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1015167,"name":"Jasmine A. Berry","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":50,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:17:08.831117Z","pmid":"37457034","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}