The Proprioceptive Senses: Their Roles in Signaling Body Shape, Body Position and Movement, and Muscle Force

Abstract

This is a review of the proprioceptive senses generated as a result of our own actions. They include the senses of position and movement of our limbs and trunk, the sense of effort, the sense of force, and the sense of heaviness. Receptors involved in proprioception are located in skin, muscles, and joints. Information about limb position and movement is not generated by individual receptors, but by populations of afferents. Afferent signals generated during a movement are processed to code for endpoint position of a limb. The afferent input is referred to a central body map to determine the location of the limbs in space. Experimental phantom limbs, produced by blocking peripheral nerves, have shown that motor areas in the brain are able to generate conscious sensations of limb displacement and movement in the absence of any sensory input. In the normal limb tendon organs and possibly also muscle spindles contribute to the senses of force and heaviness. Exercise can disturb proprioception, and this has implications for musculoskeletal injuries. Proprioceptive senses, particularly of limb position and movement, deteriorate with age and are associated with an increased risk of falls in the elderly. The more recent information available on proprioception has given a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying these senses as well as providing new insight into a range of clinical conditions.

Manual aiming in healthy aging: does proprioceptive acuity make the difference?

“…Specifically, several other investigators have reported an age-related decline in motion (Kokmen et al 1978;Wright et al 2011) and position sense of the upper limbs (Adamo et al 2007;Adamo et al 2009;Herter et al 2014). These deteriorations may partially be caused by physiological changes in the structure and function of muscle spindles throughout late adulthood (Herter et al 2014;Kalisch et al 2012;Proske and Gandevia 2012). Besides their gradual decline in number, aged muscle spindles generally show an increased capsular thickness, decreased diameter size, and lower sensitivity.…”

“…4). Physical activity has been suggested to partially compensate for the abovementioned age-related declines in muscle functioning by entailing muscle fiber hypertrophy in older adults (Proske and Gandevia 2012). Thus, active older adults may delay their natural decline in proprioception by enhancing the signaling capacity of muscle spindles and joint movement receptors.…”

“…These competing hypotheses were addressed in experiment 1. As proprioception traditionally consists of motion (i.e., the ability to perceive limb movements) and position sense (i.e., the ability to identify a static limb position) (Herter et al 2014;Proske and Gandevia 2012;Sherrington 1907), we anticipated that participants with poorer proprioceptive acuity (experiment 2) would also demonstrate poorer endpoint accuracy in the absence of visual feedback (experiment 1). Given the beneficial effect of physical activity on brain functions such as sensory processing, motor planning, and sensorimotor integration (Jacobs et al 2011;Nagamatsu et al 2012;Smith et al 2011;Voelcker-Rehage et al 2011; for a review, see Voelcker-Rehage and Niemann 2013), the association between declines in proprioceptive acuity and lower endpoint accuracy was expected to be more pronounced in non-active than active older adults (hypothesis 3).…”

Human Balance Control: Dead Zones, Intermittency, and Micro-chaos

“…Thus it is currently thought that the principle sensory input for postural sway is proprioception [78]. The important proprioception sensors for balance are [78]: 1) muscle spindles which are arranged in parallel with muscle fibers, 2) Golgi tendon organs which are arranged in series with muscle fibers, and 3) cutaneous mechanoreceptors [32,43].…”

Peripheral nerve injury induces adult brain neurogenesis and remodelling

“…Peripheral nerve injury is thus processed in the cerebellum as a multisensory perception 56, 57. Chronic nociceptive stimuli inhibit motor output through feedback from higher processing centres in the brain 58. Direct nociceptive input to the cerebellum is also likely to play an important role 33, 34.…”