VIBRATORY MOTOR STIMULATION: A Preliminary Report

At the annual meeting of the Australian Association of Neurologists in 1964, J. W. Lance-from the Division of Neurology, Prince Henry Hospital, Sydney, and the School of Medicine, University of New South Wales-made one of the earliest reports on the effects of low amplitude, high frequency, sinusoidal stretch on human skeletal muscle (Lance, 1965). This effect consists of an involuntary asynchronous motor unit contraction in the muscle subjected to the mechanical vibration, with reciprocal relaxation of the prime antagonists. Hagbarth and Eklund (1966a) termed this response the tonic vibration reflex (TVR). This author has coined the term vibratory motor stimulation (VMS) to describe the use of mechanical vibration for the purpose of eliciting the TVR or its correlates.