Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello. I am a 10th grader who has done research last year. This year, i am very interested in the topic of reflex. I am finding it quite difficult to find any experiments that were previously done, besides Pavlov's classical conditioning experiment. Does anyone have a suggestion for a project pertaining to reflex? Thank you in advance.

Hi!

Reflex is indeed an interesting and original topic to look into. Try searching on scholar.google.com for pre-written scientific papers and journal articles on reflexes; this may spark your imagination! Also, the Science Buddies project suggestions offer a wide variety of resources that may help you. Remember in scientific research, it's OK to do an experiment that no one has done before as well as reiterate someone else's findings - whatever you feel appeals to your interest.

Good luck!

Hi Sethjunelee,

Reflexes are an interesting area of study! ScibuddyAK already gave you some great advice. As a physiologist, I wanted to suggest that the patellar reflex (the knee-jerk reflex) is a fairly easy reflex with which to do an experiment. Try searching for information about that reflex to see what you can find. You might see how factors like watching the patellar tendon be struck by the reflex hammer (or not) might affect the speed or strength of the reflex, for example.

Please post again (in this same thread) if you have more questions.

Heather