Research articleEstablishing between-session reliability of TMS-conditioned soleus H-reflexes

- Intersession reliability of TMS-conditioned spinal excitability measures is assessed.
- Moderate-to-good reliability found for two conditioning paradigms.
- Differences in corticomotorneuronal pathways may explain differences in reliability.
- Methods should be developed to enhance reliability of TMS-conditioning paradigms.
- Established reliability of two indices of cortical influence on spinal excitability.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the primary motor cortex (M1) can be used to evaluate descending corticomotor influences on spinal reflex excitability through modulation of the Hoffman reflex (H-reflex). The purpose of this study was to characterize between-session reliability of cortical, spinal, and cortical-conditioned spinal excitability measures collected from the soleus muscle.Thirteen able-bodied young adult participants were tested over four sessions. Intraclass correlation coefficients were calculated to quantify between-session reliability of active motor threshold (AMT), unconditioned H-reflexes (expressed as a percentage of Mmax), and conditioned H-reflexes using short-latency facilitation (SLF) and long-latency facilitation (LLF). Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to assess associations between H-reflex facilitation and unconditioned H-reflex amplitude.Between-session reliability for SLF (ICC = 0.71) was higher than for LLF (ICC = 0.45), was excellent for AMT (ICC = 0.95), and was moderate for unconditioned H-reflexes (ICC = 0.63).Our results suggest moderate-to-good reliability of SLF and LLF to evaluate cortical influences on spinal reflex excitability across multiple testing sessions in able-bodied individuals.