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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 spindle is a stretch receptor with its own motor supply consisting of several intrafusal muscle fibres. The sensory endings of a primary (group Ia) afferent and a secondary (group II) afferent coil around the non-contractile central portions of the intrafusal fibres.
Examples include stretch receptors in the arm and leg muscles and tendons, in the heart, in the colon wall, and in the lungs. Stretch receptors are also found around the carotid artery, where they monitor blood pressure and stimulate the release of antidiuretic hormone from the posterior pituitary gland. Types include: Golgi organ
Stretch reflex tests are used to determine the integrity of the spinal cord and peripheral nervous system, and they can be used to determine the presence of a neuromuscular disease. [4] The term "deep tendon reflex", if it refers to the muscle stretch reflex, is a misnomer. "Tendons have little to do with the response, other than being ...
Pulmonary stretch receptors are mechanoreceptors found in the lungs. When the lung expands, the receptors initiate the Hering-Breuer reflex, which reduces the respiratory rate. This signal is transmitted by vagus nerve. Increased firing from the stretch receptors also increases production of pulmonary surfactant.
Reflex responses from such baroreceptor activity can trigger increases or decreases in the heart rate. Arterial baroreceptor sensory endings are simple, splayed nerve endings that lie in the tunica adventitia of the artery. An increase in the mean arterial pressure increases depolarization of these sensory endings, which results in action ...
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 ...
The Bainbridge reflex is attenuated by both anticholinergics and beta-adrenergic receptor antagonists in innervated hearts (as one or the other afferent part of the reflex arc mediating the Bainbridge reflex is blocked), [15] and can be entirely abolished by bilateral vagotomy (as the afferent portion of the reflex arc is entirely destroyed). [13]