Reliability of a new measure of H-reflex excitability

Standardization of H-reflex analyses

“…In contrast to the findings of this methods paper, the soleus H-reflex magnitude has been claimed to be highly reliable from 1 day to another (Hopkins and Wagie, 2003;Christie et al, 2004Christie et al, , 2005. However, studies considering the between day reliability of the H-reflex only consider one point on the recruitment curve, and therefore cannot provide a complete understanding of the reliability of the H-reflex and M-wave recruitment curves between days.…”

“…However, there is no agreement on the number of times the same stimulus is applied. It has been suggested that the reflex response to 10 stimuli be averaged for each experimental condition (Hugon, 1973), however, in more recent investigations, as few as eight (Jaberzadeh et al, 2004), five (Christie et al, 2004) or even three stimuli (Tucker and Türker, 2004) have been used. While increasing the number of trials increases the signal to noise ratio, it can also generate additional problems since the duration of the study for a given variable will increase, resulting in further complications such as fatigue (Bigland Ritchie et al, 1983;Miles et al, 1989).…”

“…These curves, and values obtained from these curves, are also used widely to normalise the H-reflex response within and between experimental sessions as well as between subjects (Christie et al, 2004). Both the existence and importance of these H/M curves in recognising and normalising the H-reflex response is well recognised (Koceja et al, 1995).…”

Intersession Reliability of H:M Ratio Is Greater Than the H-Reflex at a Percentage of M-Max

“…The intersession reliability associated with assessing the H-reflex at a percentage of M-max has been examined at 5% and 20% of M-max. These studies found an intraclass correlation of 0.85 at 5% (Christie et al, 2004), 0.93 (Clark, Cook, & Ploutz-Snyder, 2007), and 0.97 (Earles, Morris, Peng, & Koceja, 2002) at 20% of M-max.…”

Monopolar surface electromyography: a better tool to assess motoneuron excitability upon passive muscle stretching

“…Also, to avoid the postactivation depression or homosynaptic depression, the electrical stimulation was applied with a random interstimulus interval of at least 10 s [22,23]. Furthermore, to ensure that the changes in the H-reflex can be assumed to be a result of alterations in the corresponding a-MN excitability rather than changes in the spatial relationship between the nerve and stimulating electrode or changes in the angle of the ankle [9,24], the Mmax amplitudes remained stable during all testing conditions (as shown in Fig. 2).…”