Have a quick question

[ReptilianV]

Hey everyone  , sorry for disturbing you during your holidays but I have a really quick question about the nervous system. I'm wondering, what's the difference between the spinal reflex and the sympathetic nervous system? Both activate the muscles, glands, and organs to react to a certain stressful or threatful situation and I'm lost as to which one would activate dependent on the stimuli. Does it come down to the time of reaction?

[Bri MT]

They're just about completely different but I get why this could be confusing.

Let me put it to you this way:
- The autonomic system is always on, running the things you don't have conscious control over. Depending on the scenario, sometimes sympathetic is dominant and sometimes parasympathetic is dominant, but the autonomic nervous system is always doing things.
- The spinal reflex is like a temporary takeover of things you normally have conscious control over.

If your blood pressure goes up, you start breathing faster, pupils dilating etc that's all under autonomic ns control, specifically, sympathetic ns dominance will result in those changes.

If you move your arm away, this is generally a conscious & voluntary decision co-ordinated by the somatic ns, but in a spinal reflex your body goes "nope, no time to have brain decide, we're just gonna move it now"


^^ This isn't a perfect technical description but hopefully it helps your understanding?


Also, there is seriously no need to apologise for asking a question. Chances are, you're helping someone else who didn't want to ask & no one is forcing people to answer so there's nothing to feel bad about