Increased muscle spindle sensitivity to movement during reinforcement manoeuvres in relaxed human subjects

1. The effects of reinforcement manoeuvres, such as mental computation and the Jendrassik manoeuvre, on muscle spindle sensitivity to passively imposed sinusoidal stretching (1.5 deg, 2 Hz) in relaxed subjects were analysed. 2. The unitary activity of 26 muscle spindle afferents (23 Ia, 3 II) originating from ankle muscles was recorded using the microneurographic method. Particular care was paid to the subjects' state of physical and mental relaxation. 3. The results showed that the activity of 54% of the Ia afferents was modified during mental computation. The modifications took the form of either an increase in the number of spikes (mean, 26% among 11 Ia fibres) or a shortening in the latency of the response to sinusoidal stretching (mean, 13 ms among 3 Ia fibres), or both. They were sometimes accompanied by an enhanced variability in the instantaneous discharge frequency. The three secondary endings tested exhibited no change in their sensitivity to stretch during mental computation. 4. The increased sensitivity to passive movements sometimes began as soon as the instructions were given to the subjects and sometimes increased during mental computation. In addition, the increased sensitivity either stopped after the subjects gave the right answer or continued for several minutes. 5. During the performance of a Jendrassik manoeuvre, the Ia units underwent changes similar to those described above for mental computation. 6. It was concluded that muscle spindle sensitivity to movement can be modified in relaxed human subjects. The results reinforce the idea that the fusimotor system plays a role in arousal and expectancy, and contribute to narrowing the gap between human and behaving animal data.