I saw people talking about "modulation of motor units" and "modulation of a motor neuron pool" all the time. It seems like "modulation" can be quantified in both temporal and frequency domains. For example, people may report the power spectrum of multiple motor unit inter-spike intervals to characterize the "modulation of motor units" and examine the correlation between isometric force trace and surface EMG to see how behavioral output was modulated by motor neuron pool of a muscle (assuming a task of isometric index finger abduction that is only involved the FDI muscle). Can someone help me with the definition of "Modulation" in the context of muscle neurophysiology? Thank you very much.
'Modulation' here means factors that control... In general a 'modulating signal' is that which changes a characteristic of another. For instance, in radio we have 'amplitude modulation' (in which the interesting signal, or information, is the amplitude of a sinusoidal carrier) and 'frequency modulation' (in which the information is the changes in the frequency of the sinusoidal carrier). I liked Xin Ye comment, except that he used the word 'modulation' to define 'modulation'. :-)
Thank both of you for addressing my question. Your answers do help me understand related papers better than before :-)
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