Muscle afferent activity recorded during passive extension-flexion of rabbit's foot

In this investigation the authors studied the recorded neural activities from muscle afferents regarding ankle joint kinesthesia using cuff electrodes in a reduced rabbit model of human peripheral nerves. The ankle was passively rotated in an extension-flexion plane while the neural activity was recorded from tibial and peroneal nerves. The recorded signals mainly reflected a mixture of activity from primary and secondary muscle afferents. The activity from either nerves increased when the corresponding muscle group is stretched, an abrupt decrease in activity occurred when the muscles were shortened. The evoked activity was dependent on the initial joint position and velocity of ankle rotation.