Effects of acute sleep deprivation on H reflex and V wave

Abstract

The impact of sleep deprivation on muscular strength and power remains poorly understood. We aimed to determine the acute effects of 24 hr of sleep deprivation on H-reflex and V-wave excitability. Fourteen healthy young adults (eight men, six women) were included. Participants visited the laboratory on two different occasions, without and with 24 hr of sleep deprivation. In each session, participants were tested for maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) of the plantar flexors and dorsiflexors, soleus H-and M-recruitment curves, and evoked V wave, as well as tibialis anterior/soleus electromyographic co-activation. Twenty-four hours of sleep deprivation did not affect either plantarflexion MVC or soleus electromyographic normalized amplitude (p > .05). Moreover, H-reflex and V-wave peak-to-peak normalized amplitude did not change with sleep deprivation (p > .05). Conversely, we obtained a significant increase in antagonist/agonist level of co-activation during MVC post-sleep deprivation (6.2 ± 5.2%, p < .01). In conclusion, we found that H-reflex and V-wave responses are well preserved after 24 hr of sleep deprivation, revealing that descending neural drive and/or modulation in Ia afferent input remains largely unaffected under these circumstances. Yet, sleep deprivation affects motor control by exacerbating the magnitude of antagonist/agonist co-activation during forceful muscle contractions and this is novel.

Effects of Acute Sleep Loss on Physical Performance: A Systematic and Meta-Analytical Review

“…Some studies included in this meta-analysis assessed the influence of sleep loss on more than one performance task, either belonging to the same category [40,41,53,58,59,63,64,[75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84], or different categories [41, 43, 44, 56-59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 75, 77-81, 85-102]. For example, Souissi et al [78] measured anaerobic power in two separate tasks (i.e., squat jump and Wingate test).…”

“…However, serial measures were accepted if the preceding test was deemed unlikely to have influenced performance on the subsequent test. For example, if the preceding test used different muscle groups (e.g., knee extensor maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) and knee flexion MVC) [53,76,82,83] or a contralateral muscle group [82], or if the same test was repeated at separate times of the day (e.g., once at 0600 h, then at 1700 h) [43,53,62,64,[79][80][81]90], then each measurement was included and considered as a separate 'outcome measure'.…”

“…Instead, t statistics (or p values) derived from paired t tests were used to calculate the SD of the percentage change in exercise performance (SD Δ ). Where an exact value was quoted [45,76,88,92,[109][110][111], the calculation was performed using the following formula [112]:…”

“…where SD Δ is the SD of the net exercise performance change and R is the correlation coefficient. R was approximated (0.71) as the mean correlation coefficient calculated using raw exercise performance data from nine outcome measurements derived from seven publications [45,76,88,92,[109][110][111], as indicated by Higgins and Green [112]. Sensitivity analyses were performed using R = 0.30 and 0.80 to…”

Detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on the regulatory mechanisms of postural balance: a comprehensive review

“…However, it is worth considering the effects of sleep deprivation on the muscle coordination (e.g., agonist/antagonist muscle activity), which could subtly or substantially impact movement control tasks such as postural balance. Gonçalves et al (2021) showed that the antagonist/agonist level of co-contraction or co-activation increased during maximal voluntary contraction following sleep deprivation. This change of the antagonist/agonist co-activation would mean that the muscle coordination was affected after sleep deprivation.…”