Effect of hypnotic suggestion on knee extensor neuromuscular properties in resting and fatigued states.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to investigate whether hypnotic suggestions can alter knee extensor neuromuscular function at rest and during exercise. METHODS: Thirteen healthy volunteers (8 men and 5 women, 27 ± 3 years old) took part in this counterbalanced, crossover study including two experimental (hypnosis and control) sessions. Knee extensor neuromuscular function was tested before and after hypnosis suggestion by using a combination of voluntary contraction, transcutaneous femoral nerve electrical stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). A fatiguing exercise (sustained submaximal contraction at 20% maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) force) was also performed to evaluate the potential influence of hypnosis on the extent and origin of neuromuscular adjustments. RESULTS: Hypnosis did not (p>0.05) alter MVC force or knee extensor neural properties. Corticospinal excitability, assessed with the amplitude of knee extensor motor evoked potentials, was also unchanged (p>0.05), as was the level of intracortical inhibition assessed with paired pulse TMS (short-interval intracortical inhibition, SICI). Time to task failure (~300 s) was not different (p>0.05) between the two sessions; accordingly, hypnosis did not influence neuromuscular adjustments measured during exercise and at task failure (p>0.05). CONCLUSION: Hypnotic suggestions did not alter neuromuscular properties of the knee extensor muscles under resting condition or during/after exercise, suggesting that hypnosis-induced improvement in exercise performance and enhanced corticospinal excitability might be limited to highly susceptible participants.

Twitch potentiation induced by two different modalities of neuromuscular electrical stimulation: implications for motor unit recruitment.

INTRODUCTION: We tested the hypothesis that twitch potentiation would be greater following conventional (CONV) neuromuscular electrical stimulation (50-µs pulse width and 25-Hz frequency) compared with wide-pulse high-frequency (WPHF) neuromuscular electrical stimulation (1-ms, 100-Hz) and voluntary (VOL) contractions, because of specificities in motor unit recruitment (random in CONV vs. random and orderly in WPHF vs. orderly in VOL). METHODS: A single twitch was evoked by means of tibial nerve stimulation before and 2 s after CONV, WPHF, and VOL conditioning contractions of the plantar flexors (intensity: 10% maximal voluntary contraction; duration: 10 s) in 13 young healthy subjects. RESULTS: Peak twitch increased (P<0.05) after CONV (+4.5±4.0%) and WPHF (+3.3±5.9%), with no difference between the 2 modalities, whereas no changes were observed after VOL (+0.8±2.6%). CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate that presumed differences in motor unit recruitment between WPHF and CONV do not seem to influence twitch potentiation results.