r/Invincible • u/tyray21 • Mar 23 '24
Rex's TBI: An Oversimplified Prediciton of Neuropsychological Deficits THEORY
First, let's inspect the areas likely affected:
Let's ignore the placement of the gun as it doesn't line up with the trajectory of the bullet. it looks like the trajectory would likely pass through the brain as such:
The path would also likely be exclusively in the right hemisphere, and luckily avoiding midbrain structures (very important for involuntary functions, memory, information sharing between the brain areas, etc.), as well as hindbrain structures that would make death a certainty.
Likely affected areas are (in order of trajectory): superior areas of the occipital lobe (visual processing), inferior/medial areas of the parietal lobe (sensory processing), small parts of the superior cingulate gyrus (involved in regulating impulsive behaviors, memory, etc.), and the frontal lobe (specifically the motor areas).
What deficits I would expect from this damage could include:
- visual-perceptual processing - from occipital lobe damage. this is a pretty broad deficit, and can imply many different behaviors. This would also likely be specific to dorsal stream deficits (how we see 'where' things are) and could cause problems like poor angular judgments, poor coordination of movement in space, visuoconstructional deficits, unilateral neglect, and topographic disorientation.
- left hemiplegia / hemiparesis - from parietal / motor areas damage. think of classic stroke victim signs, where one side of their body becomes weak or limp. In this case, I would expect Rex to show at least weakness on the left side of his body (left side due to contralateral processing)
- left neglect - from occipital lobe damage. While the right hemisphere pays attention to your entire visual field, your left hemisphere only pays attention to your right visual field; so damage to the right hemisphere can cause this deficit where you are not paying attention to things in your left visual field. for example, a person with this deficit may shave only the right side of their face, or when instructed to draw an analog clock, will only fill in the numbers on the right side of the clock.
- Anosognosia/euphoria - from frontal lobe damage. Anosognosia is where you can be largely unaware or in denial of even having a deficit. A story we were told in lecture was of a stroke patient who was paralyzed, asking the nurse if they could go upstairs to grab them a drink because they're 'just too tired to get up right now'. Another outcome could be strangely enough, feeling of euphoria
I don't have the time to go into much more detail, and it would most certainly turn into delusional theory crafting to try and understand more complex deficits from a fictional animated character's TBI. But just to note, there is a very interesting implication of personality changes that would happen due to frontal lobe damage, but it would be extremely difficult to tell what those might be. If you're curious what that looks like in a real-life case study; read about Phineas Gage.
Good thing the invincible universe has comic book logic, but at the same time, it's not all that surprising that Rex could have possibly survived this injury. I am not going to take into account the brain swelling, bleeding, debris, or shock that his body would have gone through, so let's just assume those doctors pulled some magic like you've never seen to make it a good outcome, since from what I remember from the episode Rex is pretty much walking out of it with no long-term issues (unless you count loving home improvement magazines a deficit).
Overall, hope you enjoyed this relatively shitty neuropsychological analysis.
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u/Garfs_Barf Mar 23 '24
You’re forgetting that Rex’s brain is smaller than a normal one so it can simply dodge the bullet
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u/Zer0_l1f3 Spawn Mar 23 '24
No, his brain is just in fact so large it managed to absorb the bullet and increase it’s mass and therefore increase his intelligence, shooting the pressure out of my king’s beautiful forehead
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u/tyray21 Mar 24 '24
you’re right that’s my bad. could also be a case of perfectly smooth brain just deflecting the bullet
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u/JuiciestNipple Mar 24 '24
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u/tyray21 Mar 24 '24
this is fucking awesome
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u/OkImagination2044 Amber Bennett Mar 24 '24
I LOVE THIS POST. I was nerding out about this too :D
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u/tyray21 Mar 24 '24
hell yeah i’ve been seeing people keep talking about how the fuck he survived it so i was like hey i just took my clinical neuropsychology final might as well give a shitty theory
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u/OkImagination2044 Amber Bennett Mar 24 '24
it’s not shitty at all lol, it was a blast in the past for my neuro classes, and you gotta give yourself more credit <33
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u/Aggressive-Ad-8619 Mar 24 '24
What about ammo type? Seems like a full metal jacket would leave a cleaner wound than hollow point.
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u/tyray21 Mar 24 '24
i’m sure ammo type could definitely change the outcome, i was just assuming a clean pass 🤷 i’m certainly not a ballistics expert, i just study brains lol
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u/Dumbass_bi_frog Mar 24 '24
A hollow point would definitely spread and fragment, causing waaay more damage to critical areas
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u/abCivilian Mar 24 '24
Well, the bullet for sure didn't hit the part of his brain that let him beat that guys ass
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u/tyray21 Mar 24 '24
lol for sure, in reality i’d question if that’s even possible especially with his motor cortex being likely fucking obliterated but hey humans have been known to do weirder things with severe head trauma
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u/crushbone_brothers The Elephant Mar 24 '24
Phineas Gage was the fella who had a rail spike/rod bore through his head, right?
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u/tyray21 Mar 24 '24
tamping rod yeah, i hyperlinked a pubmed article if you want to read more about it
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u/craving4control Mar 24 '24
TYSM FOR THIS POST I WAS LITERALLY THINKING ABOUT THIS THE OTHER DAY!!! i don’t actually know anything about neuroscience/psychology but this was really concise and easy to understand, well done :D
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u/tyray21 Mar 24 '24
thank you! if you’re curious or have questions about any of it feel free to ask :)
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u/Atmanautt Mar 24 '24
...and if he does make a full recovery, we can just say he has super-neuroplasticity
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u/CleanHippie27 Cage the Elephant Mar 24 '24
Now hold on a second, the brain works like, the more folds, the more surface area, the more power right? Really, what is a hole in the brain, but more surface area? Rex may come out of this smarter than ever
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u/RenJordbaer Mar 24 '24
Speaking of recovery, they did say that the GDA has medical facilities and tools that are leagues better then the modern medicine the rest of the world uses.
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u/Low-Bend-2978 Mar 26 '24
Love the show but I wish they had made it a little more ambiguous as the way it happened and trajectory of the bullet imply much worse than what happened, even with his anatomy. TLOU 2 handled a similar injury in a better way; Tommy Miller gets shot almost point blank as well, but there’s a couple feet of distance and it looks much more like it was the side of his head being shot rather than what is framed as almost straight on a couple of inches away here.
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Mar 24 '24
Normaly, a gun fired so close to the head would liquefy the entire brain because of the air pressure changes right outside the barrel. Brain is really soft tissue.
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u/Ccbm2208 Mar 24 '24
I think that strong Komodo dude wacked Rex in the head once and he was fine. Muscles and bones aside, it seems like even his brain is tough.
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u/PM_ME_UR_MARINARA Mar 24 '24
We see these effects with his vision blurring and he wasn’t affected too badly by the left side motor stuff considering there was no left hand
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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '24
[deleted]