CONTINUOUS amoeboid movement is essentially a rhythmic phenomenon (Pantin, 1924), to some extent comparable with rhythmic contraction in muscle. Yet no complete investigation of the action of ions has been made which enables this unspecialised contractile mechanism to be compared with heart-muscle and cilia. The subject is important because in unicellular organisms the state of the cell can be ...

The allocation of resources to a peer partner is a prosocial act that is of fundamental importance. Joint rhythmic movement, such as occurs during musical interaction, can induce positive social experiences, which may play a role in developing and enhancing young children's prosocial skills. Here, we investigated whether joint rhythmic movement, free of musical context, increases 4-year-olds' s...

Indole-3-acetic acid, alpha-naphthylacetic acid, and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (0.001 to 1.0 mm) inhibit the nyctinastic closure of excised Albizzia leaflet pairs; antiauxins and auxin analogs are ineffective, and the auxin effects seem not to be mediated by ethylene. Indoleacetic acid (0.001 to 0.1 mm) also promotes rhythmic opening in the dark, but is ineffective during that phase of rhy...

[Purpose] We investigated the effect of rhythmic ankle movement on the contralateral soleus H-reflex. The H-reflex was evoked from the right soleus muscle. [Subjects and Methods] Healthy humans rhythmically moved the left ankle (movement condition) or held the left ankle stationary (stationary condition) at one of three positions corresponding to the ankle positions at which the H-reflex was ev...

Entrainment is defined by a temporal locking process in which one system's motion or signal frequency entrains the frequency of another system. This process is a universal phenomenon that can be observed in physical (e.g., pendulum clocks) and biological systems (e.g., fire flies). However, entrainment can also be observed between human sensory and motor systems. The function of rhythmic entrai...

1. The organization and pattern of cutaneous reflex modulation during rhythmic cyclical movements of the human upper limbs has received much less attention than that afforded the lower limb. Our working hypothesis is that control mechanisms underlying the modulation of cutaneous reflex amplitude during rhythmic arm movement are similar to those that control reflex modulation in the leg. Thus, w...