Movement after brain trauma

[theren_911]

To cut a long story short..

My friend hit a cat while we were driving home last night and it went under the wheel..

I made him turn round to check if it was ok and when we got there it was jerking around as if it were break dancing (sorry if this sounds cruel but it's the only description i can think of) It looked as though half it's head was missing, so could this have been some sort of residual nervous reaction? Or do you think it was still alive.. and in pain. It stopped after a few secconds but I keep thinking about the poor thing.

[MargeB]

I really hate to talk about this and I think it is the worst thing in the world (just about) but plenty of experiments were done in the past to remove parts of cats' brains to see what happened.

Basically the theory is that if 'brained' species 'evolve' to sometimes become 'better' this happens by adding layer upon layer, as it were, to existing brain structures. So with the back third of a cats brain, it can do enough to see 'roughly' to respond to stimuli, to eat, to move a bit, and to breathe. Add to this a motor cortex and some advanced planning bits at the front, and you have conditioning.

Add to this setup even more at the front, and you begin to get something like the human brain...areas for language and for advanced planning/organization.

Well, the outcome of this is that you can tecnically take a cat's brain and remove bits from the front and the bits at the back still kind of work.

I'm pretty much against this kind of practise though, having seen videos of it.

[theren_911]

Thanks, but his wasn't some sort of carefully executed operation, the poor things head exploded...

 

What I wanted to know if whether the movement was due to random misfires in the remaining brain/nervous system or if it was still concious and in agony.

[mfewell]

MargeB, I remember so-called 'decerebrate' rabbits from uni physiology days. A big hole in the head stuffed with tissue, paws nailed to a board. I will always recall one poor creature trying to walk. It was horrible. Of course it couldn't feel anything....

[Bully Wee]

The cat was, to all intents and purposes, effectively dead. What you saw was simply electronic spasms/convulsions which occur/depend on where the  nervous system was affected.  The cat would not have been in pain as pain requires "Awareness"  of which there is little likelihood.

If you chop off a chicken's head (please don't) it may run around like the proverbial headless chicken, but it is still dead and will stop moving in a few seconds just as the cat did.   

[theren_911]

Thanks Bully Wee

I thought that might be the case, but I wasn't 100% thanks for input everybody!

ps Don't worry, I wont be beheading any chickens in the forseable future.