Can you control your reflexes

The first is a sensor, which senses what is happening to the body, the second is a sensory neuron to carry that information to the spinal cord, and the third is a motor neuron to transmit information away from the spinal cord to the fourth part, which is the muscle that creates an action. Doctors will test reflexes by tapping the tendon just below the knee, and this causes the leg to kick out.

This knee-jerk reflex is an example of a simple monosynaptic reflex. Have you ever noticed that when you touch a sharp or hot object, you pull your hand away rapidly without even thinking about the action?

This reaction of removing your hand very quickly is a natural response within your body, designed to protect you [ 1 ]. This quick response is called a reflex , and reflexes occur without conscious thinking or planning, meaning the brain is not involved in them.

This is very different than most behaviors that you do every day, such as playing Lego, combing your hair, cutting your food, or fist bumping, which all involve using the brain. Actually, many reflexes are even faster than the blink of an eye! Although reflexes are super-fast and just happen without you thinking about them, this does not mean that they are bad.

Reflexes protect you and allow you to move around without thinking about every single action and response your body needs to make. It is important that reflexes occur without the need for thinking about them because there are things that happen to your body and forces acting in your body when you move that need to be responded to very quickly. Reflexes allow your body to react in ways that help you to be safe, to stand upright, and to be active. Imagine a typical day. You might be thinking of practicing your sport or musical instrument, walking to school, or making a snack.

In all of these actions, you are thinking, but at the same time, there are also reflexes that you are unaware of happening inside your body. These reflexes are built naturally into the body, and they exist at birth and change as we grow older. Reflexes are kind of like safety features for survival that allow us to move in response to something in the environment. Reflexes can act to protect you in many ways, including removing your hand from a hot or sharp object, or ducking when a loud and sudden sound occurs.

These fast actions are reflex responses! The fact that these responses are automatic shows that reflexes occur at a rate that is far too fast for the brain to be involved with the response. Actions that occur without the involvement of the brain are called involuntary actions, while planned actions from the brain, like throwing a ball or strumming a guitar, are called voluntary actions. After the reflex action has happened, the brain does become aware and tells you what happened.

At this point, the brain might even add to the action. For example, you might have ducked as an involuntary response to a very loud noise, but when the brain becomes involved you learn why you ducked down and the brain sends the voluntary action to respond—maybe to stand back up.

In order for reflexes to work, messages need to move around the body. These messages are action potentials , and they travel along the neurons and send messages, special parts of the neurons are involved. The neuron has three different parts that allow signals to be sensed, to travel, and then move to another neuron or muscle.

These three parts are called the dendrites, the axon, and the nerve ending Figure 1. The dendrites receive information from the sensor or other neurons. This information then moves to the axon, which travels to or from the spinal cord.

The action potential travels from the nerve endings at one end of the neuron to the next neuron. Many reflexes start at the muscle or skin and go to the spinal cord.

When the action potential reaches the nerve ending, the signal is transferred to another neuron, such as an interneuron or motor neuron. Six of the nine participants in the training group were able to suppress their reflexes. Their walking speed increased by 59 percent on average, and their gait became more symmetrical.

These improvements in speed and symmetry were not seen in three participants who were unable to suppress their reflexes, or in the control group. Many participants also spontaneously told the researchers they were noticing improvements in daily living activities. About 85 percent of these comments came from people who were able to control their reflexes after several weeks of training.

Because this was a small study, a larger multi-center trial would be necessary to assess the clinical benefits of the therapy. However, the results are encouraging, said Daofen Chen, Ph.

Until recently, this work was done mostly on rats, and focused on reflex control in the uninjured spinal cord. Those studies helped demonstrate that spinal reflexes can change with training, defined many of the complex modifications in brain and spinal cord that underlie reflex change, and established reflex training as a model for studying how circuits in the brain change with learning. In , Dr. Wolpaw and colleagues reported that reflex training improved mobility for rats with spinal cord injury.

He soon brought Dr. Thompson to the Wadsworth Center to design a reflex training protocol for people, and the current study began in Ferne Pomerantz, M. Wolpaw said he views reflex training, also known as reflex conditioning, as a complement to current rehabilitation practices. The technique could be tailored to focus on specific reflexes that affect different muscle groups, and in some cases, to increase reflexes instead of decrease them.

In its study, his group found that enhancing soleus H-reflex was beneficial for rats that had spinal cord injuries predominantly characterized by weakness without spasticity. In the current study, it is not clear why only two-thirds of the patients with spinal cord injury were able to suppress their reflexes and benefit from training. However, Dr. Reflexes do play a role in reaction time. Some people are born with faster reflexes.

Electrical impulses actually travel more quickly through their nerves. But you can also speed up nerve conduction through practice. A soccer player, for example, can improve his running or kicking. In doing so, his knee jerk might get faster. But those kinds of improvements are specific to the activity. A soccer player's feet and legs might develop faster nerve conduction than average.

But if that same soccer player were to have a contest of finger speed with a classical pianist, the pianist would win, hands down. The real key to reaction time is practice. By repeating the same movements, you make them almost automatic. That's why professional baseball players can dive to catch a sizzling line drive. But with so much practice, your movements almost mimic a reflex. They are motor skills that have been etched into your nerves and brain so that those motor pathways are almost reflexive.