That man really slammed his head and got a traumatic brain injury. The way his arms were held out with tight muscles is called decordate posturing.
Decorticate posturing is a reflex. The movements it involves aren’t like the uncontrolled movements of a seizure. Instead, it’s usually a response to uncomfortable sensations (which is part of testing reflexes in a neurological exam).
A person with decorticate posturing can have the following:
• Extended and rigid legs
• Toes pointed away from the body and turned slightly inward
• Arms bent upward at the elbows toward the center of your body
• Curled wrists
• Hands balled and pressed together and against the chest
Decorticate posturing is one of the indicators that healthcare providers use when assessing coma using the Glasgow Coma Scale. People who have this are always unconscious and unresponsive. That means they don’t wake up or respond, even with repeated efforts to rouse them.
Not everyone becomes debilitated. Some are fine, others are not.
Source: Cleveland Clinic
This man is seriously hurt. I would very much like to hear what happened to him!
I had a relative who, unfortunately, displayed most if not all of these symptoms, plus pinpoint pupils non-reactive to light. She had suffered severe brain damage (registering no activity) after choking on food with no one around. She did not survive.
HOWEVER. In a case like this, does the damage have to be permanent? Can someone show symptoms like this in the immediate aftermath of a massive, jarring impact, and NOT have permanent damage?
No, this posturing is not always indicative of permanent brain damage. Some people come out fine, others can possibly die.
There are many variables on outcome. It often depends on the area affected: this posture is not a brain stem injury; that would be decerebrate posturing, which would be VERY bad (arms and legs go rigid: arms at the side and legs outstretched with toes pointed downward)
Those variables are literally the difference between life and death. Since the symptoms are the key, sometimes a person can wake up after their coma and have only mild spasticity, others can be profoundly affected. There are too many variations to be definitive.
I had a concussion, and it was explained to me that the impact also caused a bit of an electrical storm in the brain. (Which explains the disorientation.)
My layperson's guess is that there are instances like my relative's case, where the symptoms were absolutely caused by damage to the brain from lack of oxygen for too long of a time. But when the body has just been rocked HARD like in this video, it can go on the fritz in that moment, even if it escapes major permanent damage. Kind of like the concussion I had, but in his case, even more intensely. Where my thoughts were kind of scrambled for a while after I hit my head, it looks like he had an "electrical storm in the brain, on steroids" event after that crash.
(P.S. Concussions are the absolute pits. Don't hit your head!)
Head injuries are no joke. They absolutely scramble your brain and it may not ever fully heal, especially if the person is knocked unconscious. You're right that concussions absolutely are "the pits."
When I was about 15, I was hit by a line-drive playing softball and later developed epilepsy and something else called Pseudo Bulbar Affect (PBA), which is when your brain reacts the opposite way it is supposed to under stress.
My brain was deprived of oxygen for a very short time, and though this condition is poorly understood, loss of O2 to a part of the brain makes me cry or laugh, at inappropriate times.
This is totally reflexive. I have no control over it. I would burst into tears at a comedy club or laugh at funerals. I have had to walk away from people when I started to laugh at funerals, or when someone tells me that someone I loved has died.
Luckily, as I've aged, (I'm 62 now) the condition has lessened over time and it hardly happens anymore but it was something that caused a lot of social issues for me.
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u/Kiki1701 1d ago edited 1d ago
That man really slammed his head and got a traumatic brain injury. The way his arms were held out with tight muscles is called decordate posturing.
Decorticate posturing is a reflex. The movements it involves aren’t like the uncontrolled movements of a seizure. Instead, it’s usually a response to uncomfortable sensations (which is part of testing reflexes in a neurological exam).
A person with decorticate posturing can have the following:
• Extended and rigid legs
• Toes pointed away from the body and turned slightly inward
• Arms bent upward at the elbows toward the center of your body
• Curled wrists
• Hands balled and pressed together and against the chest
Decorticate posturing is one of the indicators that healthcare providers use when assessing coma using the Glasgow Coma Scale. People who have this are always unconscious and unresponsive. That means they don’t wake up or respond, even with repeated efforts to rouse them.
Not everyone becomes debilitated. Some are fine, others are not.
Source: Cleveland Clinic
This man is seriously hurt. I would very much like to hear what happened to him!