ArticleJournal of neurophysiology2017
Fractionation of muscle activity in rapid responses to startling cues.
Article in Journal of neurophysiology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Breathing-driven modulation of reticulospinal tract activity.Experimental physiology · 2026Article
- Mapping reticulospinal drive across various muscles of the upper and lower extremities.Experimental physiology · 2025Article
- Height-dependent variation in corticospinal excitability modulation after active but not sham intermittent theta burst stimulation.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2025Article
- Association of a kinematic measure of upper limb reaching and StartReact in chronic hemiparetic stroke.Experimental brain research · 2025Article
- Comparison of the reticulospinal drive to lumbar erector spinae muscles in postural and voluntary tasks using the StartReact paradigm.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Age-related changes in reticulospinal contributions to anticipatory postural adjustments between back extensors and abdominal muscles.Experimental physiology · 2024Article
- Article
- Identifying the role of the reticulospinal tract for strength and motor recovery: A scoping review of nonhuman and human studies.Physiological reports · 2023Article
- The Existence of the StartReact Effect Implies Reticulospinal, Not Corticospinal, Inputs Dominate Drive to Motoneurons during Voluntary Movement.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- The Effect of Sound and Stimulus Expectation on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation-Elicited Motor Evoked Potentials.Brain topography · 2021Article
- Evidence for Subcortical Plasticity after Paired Stimulation from a Wearable Device.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Article
- Ipsilateral Motor Evoked Potentials as a Measure of the Reticulospinal Tract in Age-Related Strength Changes.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2021Article
- Distinct Corticospinal and Reticulospinal Contributions to Voluntary Control of Elbow Flexor and Extensor Muscles in Humans with Tetraplegia.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2020Article
- Cortical, Corticospinal, and Reticulospinal Contributions to Strength Training.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2020Article
- Excitability of Upper Layer Circuits Relates to Torque Output in Humans.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2019Article
- Gating of Sensory Input at Subcortical and Cortical Levels during Grasping in Humans.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2018Article
- Mechanical perturbations can elicit triggered reactions in the absence of a startle response.Experimental brain research · 2018Article
- StartReact effects in first dorsal interosseous muscle are absent in a pinch task, but present when combined with elbow flexion.PloS one · 2018Article
- Different contributions of primary motor cortex, reticular formation, and spinal cord to fractionated muscle activation.Journal of neurophysiology · 2018Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Movements in response to acoustically startling cues have shorter reaction times than those following less intense sounds; this is known as the StartReact effect. The neural underpinnings for StartReact are unclear. One possibility is that startling cues preferentially invoke the reticulospinal tract to convey motor commands to spinal motoneurons. Reticulospinal outputs are highly divergent, controlling large groups of muscles in synergistic patterns. By contrast the dominant pathway in primate voluntary movement is the corticospinal tract, which can access small groups of muscles selectively. We therefore hypothesized that StartReact responses would be less fractionated than standard voluntary reactions. Electromyogram recordings were made from 15 muscles in 10 healthy human subjects as they carried out 32 varied movements with the right forelimb in response to startling and nonstartling auditory cues. Movements were chosen to elicit a wide range of muscle activations. Multidimensional muscle activity patterns were calculated at delays from 0 to 100 ms after the onset of muscle activity and subjected to principal component analysis to assess fractionation. In all cases, a similar proportion of the total variance could be explained by a reduced number of principal components for the startling and the nonstartling cue. Muscle activity patterns for a given task were very similar in response to startling and nonstartling cues. This suggests that movements produced in the StartReact paradigm rely on similar contributions from different descending pathways as those following voluntary responses to nonstartling cues.
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Registered trials
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.