HABITUATION OF THE HUMAN LONG LATENCY STRETCH REFLEX

Many human reflexes are reported to show the phenomenon of habituation, by which is meant the gradual decrease in size of a response to a repetitive series of identical stimuli. Among cutaneous reflexes, for example, the electrically induced blink reflex [6] and the flexor reflex after electrical stimulation of the foot [12] habituate to a series of stimuli. In both instances it is the late components of the response which are particularly affected [4, 11, 12]. However, habituation of the mechanically evoked stretch reflex has not been noted, and the frequency of stretches has not been considered as a possible influence on its size. Part of this work has been reported in full elsewhere [1, 2].

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