© 2016 by the authors. In this paper; we introduce an enhanced electromyography (EMG) pattern recognition algorithm based on a split-and-merge deep belief network (SM-DBN). Generally, it is difficult to classify the EMG features because the EMG signal has nonlinear and time-varying characteristics. Therefore, various machine-learning methods have been applied in several previously published studies. A DBN is a fast greedy learning algorithm that can identify a fairly good set of weights rapidly-even in deep networks with a large number of parameters and many hidden laye rs. To reduce overfitting and to enhance performance, the adopted optimization method was based on genetic algorithms (GA). As a result, the performance of the SM-DBN was 12.06% higher than conventional DBN. Additionally, SM-DBN results in a short convergence time, thereby reducing the training epoch. It is thus efficient in reducing the risk of overfitting. It is verified that the optimization was improved using GA.