{
  "abstract": "Upper-limb assistive devices are commonly controlled with electromyographic (EMG) signals, but nerve injury, muscle loss, or practical limits on electrode placement can leave only a few usable signals, which constrains the decoding of intended movements. Here, we introduce a decoder that reconstructs missing muscle activations from sparse EMGs using a two-stage real-time approach: (1) estimating ongoing movement phase from available signals, and (2) retrieving corresponding muscle activations from a library of pre-recorded muscle activity templates. In proof-of-concept tests, neurologically intact participants (N=4) performed object-transfer tasks under simulated denervation conditions. The decoder accurately estimated movement phase (median root-mean-square error [RMSE] <0.17 of movement duration) and reconstructed missing muscle activations (RMSE 0.08-0.34; correlation up to 0.97) within ~2 ms, in a previously unseen participant. The results indicate that template based reconstruction could leverage sparse EMG for low latency control of assistive technology.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Carnegie Mellon University"
  ],
  "article_type": "New results",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 2,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "S. Bahdasariants"
    },
    {
      "name": "S. Yakovenko"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/4sp1jvgjtsy04.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.64898/2026.10.28.762227",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.28.762227v1.full",
  "id": "4sp1jvgjtsy04",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.28.762227v1",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "biorxiv",
      "neuroscience"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.28.762227v1.full.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-28",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/4sp1jvgjtsy04.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-04T00:21:37Z",
      "native_id": "10.64898/2026.10.28.762227",
      "source": "biorxiv",
      "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.28.762227v1"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "biorxiv:neuroscience",
      "subfield": "neuroscience"
    }
  ],
  "title": "A phase decoder for reconstructing missing muscle activity",
  "title_text": "A phase decoder for reconstructing missing muscle activity",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-05T00:21:06Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/4sp1jvgjtsy04",
  "venue": "bioRxiv",
  "versions": []
}