A Reductionist Approach to Creating and Using Neuromusculoskeletal Models

There are many possible approaches for developing models of physical systems. At one extreme exists the black-box model in which only the inputs and outputs of the system are considered important aspects of the model (see Chapter 9). Alternatively one can divide a system into separate components and model each component separately (see Chapter 8). The most obvious difference between these approaches is that there is more information in the latter model than just the inputs and outputs of the system. This latter approach is loosely termed reductionism—the form of the model for the system is ‘reduced’ into smaller components, each of which should have some testable relationship to a corresponding physical structure.