Exposure to microgravity leads to pronounced impairments in neuromuscular control, postural stability, and spinal reflex regulation that cannot be attributed to muscle atrophy alone. Rather, these deficits point to a disruption of load-dependent sensorimotor mechanisms and highlight the essential role of gravitational loading of the skeleton as a critical source of sensory input for spinal motor control. Spinal reflex behavior during upright stance has traditionally been explained primarily by muscle spindle-mediated pathways. However, this framework does not fully account for the reflex alterations observed under conditions of altered mechanical loading, including microgravity, prolonged unloading, or exposure to vibration. In parallel, advances in bone biology have identified osteocytes within the lacuno-canalicular system as highly sensitive mechanosensors that preferentially respond to dynamic loading and changes in strain rate. This insight has given rise to the concept of bone myoregulation, in which bone-derived mechanosensory signals contribute to the modulation of spinal excitability. A defining characteristic of this process is the poroelastic nature of bone tissue. As a fluid-saturated porous medium, bone exhibits frequency-dependent mechanical behavior, such that oscillatory loading modifies both the temporal profile and magnitude of interstitial fluid flow within the lacuno-canalicular network. As a result, loading frequency is expected to influence not only the timing of reflex responses but also their amplitude. Whole-body vibration offers a controlled experimental paradigm to probe these frequency-dependent, load-sensitive mechanisms in humans. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to identify the whole-body vibration frequency band that most effectively induces soleus reflex responses during quiet standing, considering both reflex latency and response amplitude. Investigators hypothesized that these responses would display frequency-dependent behavior consistent with poroelastic bone-mediated myoregulation and would be modulated by individual anthropometric characteristics, with potential implications for vibration-based countermeasures under altered gravitational loading.
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1. WBV-evoked soleus reflex latency (ms)
Timeframe: 195 seconds