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:

front view

side (sagittal) view

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:

diagram with likely path

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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