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Like the knee jerk reflex, the Lazarus sign is an example of a reflex mediated by a reflex arc—a neural pathway which passes via the spinal column but not through the brain. As a consequence, the movement is possible in brain-dead patients whose organs have been kept functioning by life-support machines , precluding the use of complex ...
Neurogenic shock results from damage to the spinal cord above the level of the 6th thoracic vertebra. [5] It is found in about half of people who have a spinal cord injury within the first 24 hours, and usually persists for one to three weeks. [5] Neurogenic shock may be caused by severe brain injury. [6]
Brain death is used as an indicator of legal death in many jurisdictions, [6] but it is defined inconsistently and often confused by the public. [7] Various parts of the brain may keep functioning when others do not anymore, and the term "brain death" has been used to refer to various combinations.
Researchers studying the brain’s final moments have gained new insight into the “wave of death” that occurs before a brain’s activity fully flatlines. When neural activity stops, it doesn ...
Spinal shock was first explored by Robert Whytt in 1750 as a loss of sensation accompanied by motor paralysis with initial loss but gradual recovery of reflexes, following a spinal cord injury (SCI) – most often a complete transection. Reflexes in the spinal cord below the level of injury are depressed (hyporeflexia) or absent (areflexia ...
Hyperreflexia is overactive or overresponsive bodily reflexes. Examples of this include twitching and spastic tendencies, which indicate disease of the upper motor neurons and the lessening or loss of control ordinarily exerted by higher brain centers of lower neural pathways. [citation needed] Spinal cord injury is the most common cause of ...
Brainstem death is a clinical syndrome defined by the absence of reflexes with pathways through the brainstem – the "stalk" of the brain, which connects the spinal cord to the mid-brain, cerebellum and cerebral hemispheres – in a deeply comatose, ventilator-dependent patient.
Spinal column injury is trauma that causes fracture of the bone or instability of the ligaments in the spine; this can coexist with or cause injury to the spinal cord, but each injury can occur without the other. [23] Abnormalities might show up on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), but the term was coined before MRI was in common use. [24]