Noise-Limited Failure of OGY Chaos Control in Regulating Monosynaptic Reflex Variability in the In Vivo Cat Spinal Cord

Monosynaptic reflexes (MSRs) elicited by constant-intensity group I afferent stimulation exhibit marked amplitude variability, commonly attributed to stochastic presynaptic modulation and dynamic postsynaptic excitability. Here, we tested whether this variability could be attenuated using the Ott–Grebogi–Yorke (OGY) chaos–control algorithm, which stabilizes unstable periodic orbits in low-dimensional nonlinear systems. In spinalized, anesthetized cats, real-time implementation of the OGY method failed to reduce MSR amplitude variability, as quantified by the coefficient of variation, and the return map structure showed no evidence of orbit stabilization. These negative results contrast with successful applications of OGY control in physical systems, cardiac tissue, hippocampal slices, and stochastic neuronal models. We interpret this failure in the context of the intense, ongoing synaptic bombardment characteristic of dorsal horn circuitry, which likely obscures or destroys the low-dimensional geometric structure required for OGY-based control. Our findings delineate a fundamental limit to classical chaos–control algorithms in intact neural circuits and highlight the need for control strategies explicitly robust to high dimensionality and physiological noise.