Reflex Lab

This quarter we’ve been doing a lot of work in the lab.  Recently, we performed a reflex lab.  This was probably one of my favorite labs because I got to smack my best friend with a mallet!  Fun fun!  The purpose of this lab was to see how long it took the reflexes of the body to react to the hit of mallet on the reflex point of their knee.  We first connected adaptor cords to various parts of the leg and body that then connected to a computer with a recording program.  The first step was to hit the mallet on a hard surface and have the model kick their leg according to the timing of the hit.  The computer would then record the exact timing of the hit in comparison to the reflex kick of the model’s leg.  After the given number of hits had been made and recorded we moved on to direct reflex.  This consisted of literally locating and hitting the reflex point on the knee cap of the model.  The computer would record the accuracy of the kick in response to the hit.  It was clear just how accurate a direct hit was in comparison to a hit to the table.  Here are our results:

1st Recording of mallet on table.

2nd Recording of mallet on knee.

After reviewing the results it's easy to see that the direct hit to the reflex point on the knee is much more accurate than the hit to the table.  This would be because the direct hit only takes time to connect to the spinal cord back to the knee point.  Whereas the hit to the table takes more time to connect with thought before running down the body to the reflex point.