Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Search research articles

Related Experiment Videos

Brain death-associated reflexes and automatisms.

Samay Jain¹, Michael DeGeorgia

¹Division of Movement Disorders, Neurological Institute, New York, NY 10032, USA. sjain@neuro.columbia.edu

Neurocritical Care

|September 22, 2005

Summary

Movements can occur during brain death, sometimes questioning the diagnosis. This review clarifies these movements, suggesting new terms like brain death-associated reflexes and automatisms for better classification.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

General vs Nongeneral Anesthesia for Endovascular Thrombectomy in Patients With Large Core Strokes: A Prespecified Secondary Analysis of SELECT2 Trial.

Neurology·2025

Same author

Critical Care Decisions After Large Core Cerebral Infarctions: A Secondary Analysis From the SELECT2 Trial.

Annals of neurology·2024

Same author

Anticoagulation Use and Endovascular Thrombectomy in Patients with Large Core Stroke: A Secondary Analysis of the SELECT2 Trial.

Annals of neurology·2024

Same author

Endovascular Thrombectomy Treatment Effect in Direct vs Transferred Patients With Large Ischemic Strokes: A Prespecified Analysis of the SELECT2 Trial.

JAMA neurology·2024

Same author

Endovascular Thrombectomy for Large Ischemic Stroke Across Ischemic Injury and Penumbra Profiles.

JAMA·2024

Same author

INSMA: An integrated system for multimodal data acquisition and analysis in the intensive care unit.

Journal of biomedical informatics·2020

Area of Science:

Neurology
Clinical Neuroscience

Background:

Diagnosis of brain death can be complicated by observed movements.
A spectrum of movements has been documented in patients declared brain dead.

Purpose of the Study:

To review and classify movements observed in brain death.
To propose standardized terminology for these phenomena.

Main Methods:

Case report and comprehensive literature review.
Analysis of movement characteristics and existing terminology.

Main Results:

Movements in brain death are common, diverse, and can fluctuate.
Existing terminology is inconsistent (e.g., Lazarus sign, spinal reflexes).
Spinal origin is suggested, but pathophysiology is often speculative; differentiating features exist.

Conclusions:

Propose "brain death-associated reflexes" for stimulus-provoked movements.
Propose "brain death-associated automatisms" for spontaneous movements.
Standardized nomenclature aids clinical reporting despite unclear pathophysiology.

Related Experiment Videos