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Motor unit behavior during clonus

¹The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida; ²Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; and ³Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida

Submitted 1 June 2005 ; accepted in final form 9 August 2005

Medial gastrocnemius surface electromyographic activity and intramuscular electromyographic activity were recorded from six individuals with chronic cervical spinal cord injury to document the recruitment order of motor units during clonus. Four subjects induced clonus that lasted up to 30 s while two subjects induced clonus that they actively stopped after 1 min. Mean clonus frequency in different subjects ranged from 4.7 to 7.0 Hz. Most of the 166 motor units recorded during clonus (98%) fired once during each contraction but at slightly different times during each cycle. Other motor units fired during some clonus cycles (1%) or in bursts (1%). When 59 pairs of units were monitored over consecutive clonus cycles (n = 5–89 cycles), only 8 pairs of units altered their recruitment order in some cycles. Recruitment reversals only occurred in units that fired close together in the clonus cycle. These data demonstrate that orderly motor unit recruitment occurs during involuntary contractions of muscles paralyzed chronically by cervical spinal cord injury, providing further support for the importance of spinal mechanisms in the control of human motor unit behavior.

motor unit recruitment; human spinal cord injury; spasticity; muscle spasm; persistent inward current