Abnormal posturing

Abnormal posturing is an involuntary flexion or extension of the arms and legs, indicating severe brain injury.

[5] Patients with decorticate posturing present with the arms flexed, or bent inward on the chest, the hands are clenched into fists, and the legs extended and feet turned inward.

[citation needed] Decorticate posturing indicates that there may be damage to areas including the cerebral hemispheres, the internal capsule, and the thalamus.

While decorticate posturing is still an ominous sign of severe brain damage, decerebrate posturing is usually indicative of more severe damage at the rubrospinal tract, and hence, the red nucleus is also involved, indicating a lesion lower in the brainstem.

[9] A person displaying decerebrate posturing in response to pain receives a score of two in the motor section of the Glasgow Coma Scale (for adults) and the Pediatric Glasgow Coma Scale (for infants), due to the muscles extending because of the neuro-muscular response to the trauma.

In competitive contact sports, posturing (typically of the forearms) can occur with an impact to the head and is termed the fencing response.

[8][failed verification] Posturing due to stroke usually only occurs on one side of the body and may also be referred to as spastic hemiplegia.

[2] For reasons that are poorly understood, but which may be related to high intracranial pressure, children with malaria frequently exhibit decorticate, decerebrate, and opisthotonic posturing.

[16] Normally people displaying decerebrate or decorticate posturing are in a coma and have poor prognoses, with risks for cardiac arrhythmia or arrest and respiratory failure.