A 25 year-old male involved in a motorcycle accident was brought to your ER. The patient complains of being unable to move his legs voluntarily.
The doctor orders a CT but the CT is currently out of commission so you must do some inductive reasoning. One thing you must determine is the severity and location of the patient’s lesion. You begin by scraping the bottom of their foot with the dull-pointed end of a reflex hammer starting at the heel moving to the small toe and then following the ball of the foot toward the big toe. The patient’s foot demonstrates a Babinski’s sign.
Deliverables
Answer the following questions and save your responses in a Microsoft Word document. Provide a scholarly resource in APA format to support your answers.
The term used for this condition (inability to move legs voluntarily) is called:
Name the parts of a basic reflex pathway.
Describe Babinski’s sign and compare it to what a normal response would look like.
Why would one see a Babinski sign rather than a normal sign?
Why do you think this is not a first order neuron issue? Hint: What would you see (or not see) if the nerves were damaged?
Where along the spinal cord could you see a lesion in the CT for this patient?
