REFLEX ACTION • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Reflex action

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/rˈiflɛks ˈækʃən/ Listen

adjective

Reflex adj.

Directed back; attended by reflection; retroactive; introspective. "The reflex act of the soul, or the turning of the intellectual eye inward upon its own actions."

Produced in reaction, in resistance, or in return.

(Physiol.) Of, pertaining to, or produced by, stimulus or excitation without the necessary intervention of consciousness.

Reflex action (Physiol.), any action performed involuntarily in consequence of an impulse or impression transmitted along afferent nerves to a nerve center, from which it is reflected to an efferent nerve, and so calls into action certain muscles, organs, or cells.

Reflex nerve (Physiol.), an excito-motory nerve. See Exito-motory.

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Etymology of 'Reflex action'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Reflex action" Quotes from Famous Books

... other, on the chlorophyll, or green colouring matter. This decomposition of carbonic acid, and the fixation of the carbon by the plant with the formation of starch, takes place only under the influence of sunlight. During the night a reflex action takes place, which is commonly known as respiration, and which is exactly analogous to animal respiration.[21] The rate at which the fixation of carbon takes place depends on the strength of the sun's rays. It seems to take place ...

— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... struck with the brilliancy of our own conversation and the profundity of our own thoughts, when we shared them with one, with whom we were in sympathy at the time. The brilliancy was not ours; it was the reflex action which was the result of the communion. That is why the effect of different people upon us is different, one making us creep into our shell and making us unable almost to utter a word; another through some strange magnetism enlarging the bounds of our whole being and drawing the best ...

— Friendship • Hugh Black

... that, we should ask no more, for we believe in the nation. I heard a doctor say, the other day, that a man's chief lesson was to pull his brain down into his spinal cord; that is to say, to make his activities not so much the result of conscious thought and volition, as of unconscious, reflex action; to stop thinking and willing, and simply do what one has to do. May there not be a hint here of the ultimate relation of the individual to the social organism; the relation of our literature to ...

— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... criticism than in regard to amusements. The standard and the usage degenerate together unless there is control by an active and well-trained taste and sense. The popular taste and sense are products of inherited mores. It is this reflex action of habitual acts and experiences which makes the subject difficult. All the primary facts and the secondary or remoter reflections are intertwined as in an organic growth, and all go together. The facts exert constant education, and every positive effort to interfere with the course of ...

— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner