Spinal Nerves, and Human Reflex Physiology

Mahmoud Alnsour
TA: Khoosheh
3/9/16

Introduction:
The Human body is set up in a way that it can quickly respond to stimuli in order to increase
chances of survival. Thanks to the spinal cord, thought processes do not need to continue to the brain in
order to output a function. With simple stimuli, quick responses known as reflexes are set into play from
the spinal cord set into play from spinals nerves, in order to allow the quick retraction of body parts from
situations such as touching hot objects. These were tested in the Human reflex lab, as well as anatomical
aspects of this were observed with the spinal cord and nerves that branched from there.
Material & Methods:
For the first part of this lab, we observed slides of the spinal cord and nerve through a
microscope. We identified the gray matter within the cross section of the spinal cord and looked for
nerves on an inflated image of a lateral cross section of the spinal cord. We looked for the nerves within
the cord that innervated muscles, as well as anatomical land marks such as the dorsal and ventral fins of
the chord. We also identified grey versus white matter.
The second part of the lab, we observed body reflexes of members of our lab group. With a reflex
hammer that had a rubber tip, we began testing and innervating reflex nerves that worked their way into
the spinal cord and identifying different strengths of innervation. We also used a ruler and flashlight to
determine pupil dilatation reflex to different strengths of light.
Results:

Grey Matter:

Dorsal Horn

Ventral Horn

White matter

Microscopic slide cross section of spinal cord.

Cross section:

Under the microscope, thanks to the die applied to the cross sectional slide, it was easy to
differentiate the gray from white matter. Using the cross section, an inflated and much larger image made
it easier to put the cross sectional slide into context. We were able to identify the spinal nerve, body of
vertebra, spinal meninges, and the bone of vertebra as well as other anatomical landmarks in the structure
of the spinal chord. The easiest to identify however, was the dorsal and ventral horn of the butterfly like
structure of the spinal cord. This is composed of gray matter, which myelinated cells and cell bodies of
neurons, that branch out into the white matter, which is composed of axons and unmyelinated cells.
After completing the anatomical comparison of structures, we moved onto the human
reflex physiology lab, and began with the patellar ligament. There, we innervated the nerve with the
hammer, and caused the leg to flare upward without the control of the test subject, representing the reflex
nerve presence. The innervation was strengthened when we had our test subject become distracted with a
simple math problem. When the subject was asked to pull himself toward the bench, his leg fired upward,
and caused the strongest reflex out of the three. We followed this exercise with a testing the reflex in the
finger. We asked the subject to close his eyes, and prodded the finger with something sharp, causing him
to pull away. Afterwards, we had the subject close his eye, and tested the natural size of his pupil. We
observed that even when light was shined in only one of the pupils, we still noted that the light caused a
dual pupil constriction. We also saw that when stroking the neck, the pupil presented dilation. We
measured the length of where the subjects fingers closed around the ruler, and next we proceeded to drop
the ruler and see the catching reflex of the student. We saw that it produced mediocre results, as the
student had to repeat it multiple time. The final step, after the experimenter said a word, the subject must
say a word and catch the ruler. This was the most difficult task as much thought was put into it.

Discussion & Conclusion

The reason these labs were put together, was due to the fact that the spinal cord work spinal
nerves work together in order to achieve the proper reflex that we were testing. It is the initial step in
communication from sensory receptors and effectors, and plays a dynamic role in filtering certain simple
stimuli that only need minimal level of response. These responses are usually involuntary, and are found
from birth or learned as time goes by. The reflexes can be either autonomic or somatic. When the first
kind, we are generally unaware of the response, as it causes homeostatic changes as it changes body
functions by effecting cardiac and smooth muscles. With somatic responses, as present in the motor
functions we tested, we saw a general awareness of the functions taking place. However, with the
dilatation of the eyes, there was no awareness that their pupils were dilating or contraction of the eyes. It
was interesting observing looking at the different responses of stimulation of different reflexes and the
fluctuation in the responses when setting up different distractions. At times, when having the subject
perform a different task, we noticed that there would be stronger innervation. We also saw that with more
complex reflexes such as catching the meter stick, we saw that with more thought placed into it, we saw a
decline in speed and coordination.