Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Spinal reciprocal inhibition in human locomotion

Spinal reciprocal inhibition in human locomotion The purpose of this paper was to study spinal inhibition during several different motor tasks in healthy human subjects. The short-latency, reciprocal inhibitory pathways from the common peroneal (CP) nerve to the soleus muscle and from the tibial nerve to the tibialis anterior muscle were studied as a depression of ongoing voluntary electromyograph (EMG) activity. First, the effect of stimulus intensity on the amount of inhibition was examined to decide an appropriate stimulation to study the task-dependent modulation of inhibition. Then, the inhibition at one level of stimulation (1.5 x motor threshold) was investigated during standing, walking, and running. The change in slope of inhibition vs. EMG level, which approximates the fraction of ongoing activity that is inhibited, decreased with CP stimulation from 0.52 during standing to 0.30 during fast walking (6 km/h) to 0.17 during running at 9 km/h. Similarly, the slope decreased with tibial nerve stimulation from 0.68 (standing) to 0.42 (fast walking) to 0.35 (running at 9 km/h). All differences, except the last one, were highly significant ( P < 0.01, Student's t -test). However, the difference between walking (0.42) and running (0.36) at the same speed (6 km/h) was not significant with tibial nerve stimulation and only significant at P < 0.05 with CP nerve stimulation (0.30, 0.20). Also, the difference between standing (0.52) and slow walking (3 km/h; 0.41) with CP stimulation was not significant, but it was significant ( P < 0.01) with tibial nerve stimulation (0.68, 0.49). In conclusion, our findings indicate that spinal reciprocal inhibition decreases substantially with increasing speed and only changes to a lesser extent with task. antagonist muscle nerve stimulation; walking; running Address for reprint requests and other correspondence: R. B. Stein, Centre for Neuroscience, 513 Heritage Medical Research Centre, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2S2 (E-mail: richard.stein@ualberta.ca ). http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Applied Physiology The American Physiological Society

Spinal reciprocal inhibition in human locomotion

Loading next page...
 
/lp/the-american-physiological-society/spinal-reciprocal-inhibition-in-human-locomotion-py0SBR2VnO

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
The American Physiological Society
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 the American Physiological Society
ISSN
8750-7587
eISSN
1522-1601
DOI
10.1152/japplphysiol.01060.2003
pmid
14660502
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to study spinal inhibition during several different motor tasks in healthy human subjects. The short-latency, reciprocal inhibitory pathways from the common peroneal (CP) nerve to the soleus muscle and from the tibial nerve to the tibialis anterior muscle were studied as a depression of ongoing voluntary electromyograph (EMG) activity. First, the effect of stimulus intensity on the amount of inhibition was examined to decide an appropriate stimulation to study the task-dependent modulation of inhibition. Then, the inhibition at one level of stimulation (1.5 x motor threshold) was investigated during standing, walking, and running. The change in slope of inhibition vs. EMG level, which approximates the fraction of ongoing activity that is inhibited, decreased with CP stimulation from 0.52 during standing to 0.30 during fast walking (6 km/h) to 0.17 during running at 9 km/h. Similarly, the slope decreased with tibial nerve stimulation from 0.68 (standing) to 0.42 (fast walking) to 0.35 (running at 9 km/h). All differences, except the last one, were highly significant ( P < 0.01, Student's t -test). However, the difference between walking (0.42) and running (0.36) at the same speed (6 km/h) was not significant with tibial nerve stimulation and only significant at P < 0.05 with CP nerve stimulation (0.30, 0.20). Also, the difference between standing (0.52) and slow walking (3 km/h; 0.41) with CP stimulation was not significant, but it was significant ( P < 0.01) with tibial nerve stimulation (0.68, 0.49). In conclusion, our findings indicate that spinal reciprocal inhibition decreases substantially with increasing speed and only changes to a lesser extent with task. antagonist muscle nerve stimulation; walking; running Address for reprint requests and other correspondence: R. B. Stein, Centre for Neuroscience, 513 Heritage Medical Research Centre, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2S2 (E-mail: richard.stein@ualberta.ca ).

Journal

Journal of Applied PhysiologyThe American Physiological Society

Published: May 1, 2004

There are no references for this article.