ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2014
Human muscle spindle sensitivity reflects the balance of activity between antagonistic muscles.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 80 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Beyond propulsion: muscle proprioception enables hydrodynamic sensing in fish body.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Adaptation of Transcortical Responses in Upper Extremity Movements During an Elbow Visuomotor Tracking Task in Humans.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2025Article
- Preparation duration shapes the goal-directed tuning of stretch reflex responses.Experimental brain research · 2025Article
- Excitation-inhibition imbalance in the motor control network: a key factor in post-stroke spasticity.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Review
- Effects of attentional focus on spatial localization of distal body parts and touch in two-arm position matching.Experimental brain research · 2024Article
- Increased muscle coactivation is linked with fast feedback control when reaching in unpredictable visual environments.iScience · 2024Article
- Quantity and Distribution of Muscle Spindles in Animal and Human Muscles.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Cancer survivors post-chemotherapy exhibit unimpaired short-latency stretch reflexes in the proximal upper extremity.Journal of neurophysiology · 2023Article
- The nervous system tunes sensorimotor gains when reaching in variable mechanical environments.iScience · 2023Article
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- Evaluation of stretch reflex synergies in the upper limb using principal component analysis (PCA).PloS one · 2023Article
- Short-latency stretch reflexes depend on the balance of activity in agonist and antagonist muscles during ballistic elbow movements.Journal of neurophysiology · 2023Article
- Article
- Elbow Joint Position and Force Senses in Young and Adult Untrained People and Gymnasts.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- The Agonist-antagonist Myoneural Interface.Techniques in orthopaedics (Rockville, Md.) · 2021Article
- Encoding of limb state by single neurons in the cuneate nucleus of awake monkeys.Journal of neurophysiology · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Muscle spindles are commonly considered as stretch receptors encoding movement, but the functional consequence of their efferent control has remained unclear. The "α-γ coactivation" hypothesis states that activity in a muscle is positively related to the output of its spindle afferents. However, in addition to the above, possible reciprocal inhibition of spindle controllers entails a negative relationship between contractile activity in one muscle and spindle afferent output from its antagonist. By recording spindle afferent responses from alert humans using microneurography, I show that spindle output does reflect antagonistic muscle balance. Specifically, regardless of identical kinematic profiles across active finger movements, stretch of the loaded antagonist muscle (i.e., extensor) was accompanied by increased afferent firing rates from this muscle compared with the baseline case of no constant external load. In contrast, spindle firing rates from the stretching antagonist were lowest when the agonist muscle powering movement (i.e., flexor) acted against an additional resistive load. Stepwise regressions confirmed that instantaneous velocity, extensor, and flexor muscle activity had a significant effect on spindle afferent responses, with flexor activity having a negative effect. Therefore, the results indicate that, as consequence of their efferent control, spindle sensitivity (gain) to muscle stretch reflects the balance of activity between antagonistic muscles rather than only the activity of the spindle-bearing muscle.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.