You see and object falling off the table and you try to catch it before it hits the floor. Predict how the reaction times for this response would compare with the patellar reflex response times?
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Answer:
Reflexes require no thought. They are automatic, fast, and of huge importance to a human's ability to successfully respond to their environment. Despite the magnificent information-processing power of the billions of neurons in our brain, we need a lot of stuff to be done automatically. Without reflexes, our brains would be overloaded with worrying about constantly updating the position of our unstable bodies to keep us upright. Without reflexes, our ability to engage in complex thought (black holes, neuroscience, what to do this weekend, how do I make an instrumented reflex hammer?) would be limited. Without reflexes, your reactions to painful stimuli would require thought, and... don't take it personally.. but you think very slowly... Don't feel bad, all humans are slow thinkers, and we need more speed to respond to dangerous painful stimuli. So we let our spinal cord do that fast work for us.
One example of a reflex is the patellar stretch reflex. Our spinal cord partners with sensors in our muscles, called muscle spindles, to keep track of where our bodies are in space and how stretched or contracted our muscles are. The way that these sensors interact with our spinal cord is through a reflex pathway. Stretching the muscle activates the muscle spindle at the end of the sensory neuron (embedded in your muscle) and starts the reflex. The reflex is to prevent overstretching of the muscle and compensates with a contraction.