Question

Reaction Speed Assessment. Based on your about voluntary movement ;

Part A. Explain how your brain works with your nerves to control movement .

Part B. What do you predict would happen to your reaction time if you had several simultaneous tasks to complete? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

A. The voluntary movement of skeletal muscles is controlled by the motor cortex in the cerebrum.
When a stimulus excites specific receptors in our skin and body, the receptor fires an action potential that is transmitted to brain through sensory afferent nerves. Once the brain processes the sensory information a motor response is evoked which carried from brain to the skeletal muscles through motor efferent nerves. These nerves are spinal and cranial nerves.
The somatic nervous system of the peripheral nervous system helps to control the voluntary movement of skeletal muscles.
B. Reaction time or the response time is the time taken by an individual to respond to a stimulus. It is the time interval between the presentation of a stimuli and body reaction to the stimulus.
When a peron multitasks various sensory signals are being send to the brain for processing. Some of the tasks may require higher attention than the others and thus the sensory perception may take longer. Also the brain becomes slower when processing too much information at the same time. This results in increased reaction time during multitas