Mechanism for reflex reversal during walking in human tibialis anterior muscle revealed by single motor unit recording.

1. A reversal in the sign of a cutaneous reflex during walking was recently described in the human. Such reversals were most clearly seen in muscles that were active in two parts of the step cycle, such as the tibialis anterior (TA). The current study determined whether the reversal resulted from differential activation of a single group of motor units. 2. Single motor units were recorded from the TA muscle of healthy human subjects while they walked on a treadmill with a splint that limited motion of the ankle joint. The majority of motor units from which recordings were made (43 out of 46) were active in both the swing phase and the transition from swing to stance, indicating that the two bursts of activity from the TA muscle do not represent the activity of two separate populations of motor units. 3. The firing behavior of three motor units was observed during walking steps when stimuli were applied to the posterior tibial nerve during either the swing phase or the transition from swing to stance. The post-stimulus time histograms indicated that the same motor unit was excited during the swing phase, and inhibited during the transition from swing to stance. 4. The results support the hypothesis that there are parallel excitatory and inhibitory pathways from cutaneous afferents to single motoneurones of the TA muscle. A shift in balance between the two pathways as a function of the step cycle most probably generates the reflex reversal observed.