Introduction

Abstract

Reflexes are brief stereotyped movements carried out in automatic fashion in response to some sensory stimulus. Many avoid, escape from or minimise the effects of noxious stimuli. Thus, a boxer blinks and ducks as his opponent’s fist approaches his face, while someone unlucky enough to step on a drawing pin quickly lifts his foot in response. But this book would not have been written if reflexes were not intimately involved in almost all aspects of motor control. in the maintenance of equilibrium, in the control of posture, and in locomotion and other movements. At the physiological level, the simplest reflex arcs involve only two neurones. But such arcs are only small components of most behavioural reflexes, which consist of many interacting arcs in parallel. Thus someone lifting his foot from a pin must not only coordinate activiby in several muscles in the leg that is lifted, but adjust tension in many others to avoid falling over.