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Answer» STEMACADEMIAAGRICULTURE & FARMINGHUMANITIESSOCIAL SCIENCES\xa0\xa0\tOwlcation»\tSTEM»\tMedical ScienceReflex Action and Reflex Arc: What Happens When You Accidentally Touch a Hot PotUpdated on August 6, 2017Edmund Custers\xa0\xa0moreContact AuthorReflex action and reflex arc when a cook touched a hot pot by accident\xa0|\xa0SourceReflex Action and Reflex ArcReflex is a special ability that evolution gifted us to facilitate our survival. Whenever part of your body comes in contact with an object capable of causing you harm, you tend to quickly withdraw that part of the body. This happens before your brain gets the time it needs to process the threat.Reflex ActionIf you accidentally touch a hot pot on your stove while cooking, you would involuntarily (and nearly instantaneously) snatch your hand away from the pot. This response is called a ‘reflex action\'.Reflex ArcContact with the hot pot triggers the start of a series of events in the body to evoke a response.At the point of contact with the hot pot, skin receptors quickly send nerve impulses (electrical) to the spinal cord (central nervous system) via sensory neurons. In the spinal cord, the impulses are processed and a response is relayed back.In the spinal cord, the interneurons (also known as relay neurons) make the connections between the sensory neurons (bringing the message from hand) and the correct motor neurons (taking the response back to the hand). It would be not be useful if the response was sent to the wrong part of the body—in this case, a response sent to the leg wouldn\'t be too helpful as the stimulus is coming from the hand.From the interneurons, the response is relayed to the motor neurons which project out of the spinal cord to stimulate your muscles (effector) to contract, causing you to snatch your hand away from the hot pot. This pathway taken by nerve impulses to elicit a response is known as a ‘reflex arc’.This process happens so fast that the response occurs before the message reaches the brain. This results to a quicker time-to-response as the thinking process of the brain may be relatively time consuming.
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