View Single Post
Old February 11, 2000, 02:02 AM   #5
Medic
Member
 
Join Date: February 8, 2000
Posts: 96
45King, just in case your interested....The brain has something called the reticular activating system or RAS. I believe the damage to the synapses you refer to is a disruption of the RAS. The RAS is responsible for maintaining consciousness and wakefulness. A blow that is strong enough does in fact damage the electrical current that is produced by the RAS causing the individual to lose consciousness. Usually the RAS reactivates itself after approx. 1-3 minutes and whoever got whacked will probably wake up pretty irritated....i.e. don't hang around. As far as the brain getting 'sloshed' around...if a blow to the head is powerful enough or if the head experiences a sudden deceleration (as in a motor vehicle crash) the brain will continue to move around in the skull. When this occurs, the small blood vessels that bridge the skull and brain can tear and the actual brain tissue can be lacerated by portions of the skull. Usually this will not cause an immediate loss of consciousness, but will put them down for the count in a few weeks or months. Small intracranial bleeds take some time to develop, but a large one could be effective immediately.

I hope this might clarify mechanism of action for knockin' someones' noggin'.

Medic
Medic is offline  
 
Page generated in 0.03027 seconds with 8 queries