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Knee jerk or patellar reflex — a kick caused by striking the patellar tendon with a tendon hammer just below the patella, stimulating the L4 and L3 reflex arcs. Moro reflex, a primitive reflex— only in all infants up to 4 or 5 months of age: a sudden symmetric spreading of the arms, then unspreading and crying, caused by an unexpected loud ...
Usually the onset of the startle response is a startle reflex reaction. The startle reflex is a brainstem reflectory reaction (reflex) that serves to protect vulnerable parts, such as the back of the neck (whole-body startle) and the eyes (eyeblink) and facilitates escape from sudden stimuli. It is found across many different species ...
In biology, a reflex, or reflex action, is an involuntary, unplanned sequence or action [1] and nearly instantaneous response to a stimulus. [2] [3] The simplest reflex is initiated by a stimulus, which activates an afferent nerve. The signal is then passed to a response neuron, which generates a response.
The stretch reflex (myotatic reflex), or more accurately "muscle stretch reflex", is a muscle contraction in response to stretching a muscle. The function of the reflex is generally thought to be maintaining the muscle at a constant length but the response is often coordinated across multiple muscles and even joints. [ 1 ]
The yawn reflex has long been observed to be contagious. In 1508, Erasmus wrote, "One man's yawning makes another yawn", [39] and the French proverbialized the idea to "Un bon bâilleur en fait bâiller sept" ('One good gaper makes seven others gape'). [40] Often, if one person yawns, this may cause another person to "empathetically" yawn. [23]
A common example of reciprocal innervation, is the effect of the nociceptive (or nocifensive) reflex, or defensive response to pain, otherwise commonly known as the withdrawal reflex; a type of involuntary action of the body to remove the body part from the vicinity of an offending object by contracting the appropriate muscles (usually flexor ...
The associated term "ideo-dynamic response" (or "reflex") applies to a wider domain, and extends to the description of all bodily reactions (including ideo-motor and ideo-sensory responses) caused in a similar manner by certain ideas, e.g., the salivation often caused by imagining sucking a lemon, which is a secretory response.
The acoustic reflex (also known as the stapedius reflex, [1] stapedial reflex, [2] auditory reflex, [3] middle-ear-muscle reflex (MEM reflex, MEMR), [4] attenuation reflex, [5] cochleostapedial reflex [6] or intra-aural reflex [6]) is an involuntary muscle contraction that occurs in the middle ear in response to loud sound stimuli or when the person starts to vocalize.