The Integrative Action of the Nervous System By Charles S. Sherrington Holt Professor of Physiology in the University of Liverpool, ‘Honorary Member of the American Physiological Socely, ete. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS ‘peocevrCorrnionr, 1908 Br Yaus UstesnarrrLECTURE V COMPOUND REFLEXES: SIMULTANEOUS COMBINATION Argument: Combination of reflexes simultaneously proceeding. Spread ‘of reflextesponse about a focus. Gray matter and lines of reflex resistance. “Short” reflexes and “long” reflexes. Rules decipher: able in the spread of reflex reaction.” Pflager’s “‘laws”" of spinal irradiation. ‘The “reflex figure.” Variability of reflex rest. “Ira lation ofa reflex attaches itself to the problem of the simultaneous combination of reflexes. Co-ordination of reflex result obtains even ‘when large mixed afferent nerve-trunks are simulated. ‘The move- ‘ent excited by stimulation of the motor spinal nerve oot does not Feally resemble a movement evoked reflexly or by the will Extent of simoleaneoos combinations of reflexes. Simultaneous stimuli frrange themselves naturally in constellations in which some com- ponent is usually of preeminent intensity. "The resulting compound eaction has both positive and negative sides ‘A LARGE part of co-ordination consists in the orderly com- bining of reffexes. In studying this co-ordination we have to deal with and discriminate between simultaneous combinations and successive combinations of reflexes. We may proceed to attempt the former problem. Unadiation. If by appropriate stimulation of the skin of the foot, say by unipolar faradization of a spot of the plantar skin of a digit, the ordinary flexion-reflex of the hind limb of the dog be evoked, the extent of the reflex increases with increase in the intensity of the stimulus. The reflex-effect spreads over a larger and larger field, irradiating as it were in. various direc~ tions from a focus of reflex-discharge which takes effect on the limb itself The centrifugal discharge elicited by any reflex seems as regards its spatial distribution to be focussed about a centre round which its irradiation varies according to circumstance. In the scratch-refiex the pretibial muscles that dorso-flex the ankle seem to lie at the focus of the motor discharge. In