Tonic vibration reflex is a sustained contraction of a

muscle Skeletal muscles (commonly referred to as muscles) are organs of the vertebrate muscular system and typically are attached by tendons to bones of a skeleton. The muscle cells of skeletal muscles are much longer than in the other types of mus ...

subjected to vibration. This reflex is caused by vibratory activation of

muscle spindles Muscle spindles are stretch receptors within the body of a skeletal muscle that primarily detect changes in the length of the muscle. They convey length information to the central nervous system via afferent nerve fibers. This information can be ...

— muscle receptors sensitive to stretch. Tonic vibration reflex is evoked by placing a vibrator — which in this case is typically an electrical motor with an eccentric load on its shaft — on a muscle's tendon. 30–100 Hz vibration activates receptors of the skin, tendons and, most importantly, muscle spindles. Muscle spindle discharges are sent to the spinal cord through

afferent nerve fiber Afferent nerve fibers are the axons (nerve fibers) carried by a sensory nerve that relay sensory information from sensory receptors to regions of the brain. Afferent projections ''arrive'' at a particular brain region. Efferent nerve fiber ...

s, where they activate polysynaptic

reflex In biology, a reflex, or reflex action, is an involuntary, unplanned sequence or action and nearly instantaneous response to a stimulus. Reflexes are found with varying levels of complexity in organisms with a nervous system. A reflex occurs ...

arcs, causing the muscle to contract. The effects of sustained vibratory stimulation on muscle contraction,

posture Posture or posturing may refer to: Medicine * Human position ** Abnormal posturing, in neurotrauma ** Spinal posture ** List of human positions * Posturography Posturography is the technique used to quantify postural control in upright stance in ...

and kinesthetic

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...

s are much more complex than merely contraction of the muscle being vibrated. Russian scientists Victor Gurfinkel, Mikhail Lebedev, Andrew Polyakov and Yuri Levick used vibratory stimulation to study human posture control and spectral characteristics of electromyographic (EMG) activity.

References

* * English Translation * * * * English Translation *{{cite journal , doi=10.1007/BF01052289 , last1=Lebedev , first1=M. A. , last2=Polyakov , first2=A. V. , title=Analysis of the interference electromyogram of the human soleus muscle under vibrational stimulation , journal=Neurophysiology , volume=23 , pages=47–54 , year=1991 Reflexes

See also

References