The effects of exercise on limb proprioceptive signals

The definition of proprioception in the literature is equivocal, therefore it is desirable for communication and comprehension purposes that all authors who use proprioception and its related terms reach a consensus as to their meaning. This review aims to clarify these terms and to improve the understanding of the proprioceptive system. Over the years, many different views have been put forward on the origin of proprioception. The present-day view is that, in the absence of vision, we are able to determine the location of our limbs by signals of both peripheral and central origin. Nonetheless, recent research findings argue that the centrally generated sense of effort may not be well-suited to signal position sense and suggest revising the sense of effort hypothesis. This paper enlightens the latest views on the role of peripheral afferents and central signals involved in the proprioceptive system. It also describes the most common experimental protocols used to evaluate proprioception. The paper's final section describes in detail the effect of different muscle contraction types on kinaesthetic sense-in particular, on the sense of limb position. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.