Ooooh that's really interesting, I didn't know that!! And before people ask, yes,
there are definitely studies corroborating
these findings. And notably, these findings pertain to coma patients, who remain persistently in decorticate/decerebrate posturing due to reduced capacity for motor function (as a result of severe brain injury).
The thing that I find really interesting, as someone who has watched a bunch of hanging videos, is that (to my untrained eye at least) decerebrate posturing often seems to occur transiently for several seconds at a time, relatively quickly after onset of unconsciousness. I'm an idiot, but I'd guess that it has something to do with the fact that in a state of hypoxia, the cortex reduces its inhibition of the vestibular nucleus, which causes activation of extensor motor neurons in the spinal cord and inhibition of flexor motor neurons? However, because the cortex stops regulating all sorts of motor neurons in all sorts of places somewhat randomly during initial onset of hypoxia, random motor neuron activations override the vestibular nucleus, ensuring that - at least in the early stages of unconsciousness - decerebrate posturing doesn't persist for very long? And this would be consistent with the findings of the studies, where patients had serious enough damage to the forebrain (where the cortex and all sorts of motor neuron regulation takes place) to be comatose but enough structural integrity in the brainstem (where the vestibular nuclei are) to sustain life in a comatose state? Or maybe it's as
@Emerita said, that it's not true decerebrate posturing if it doesn't persist.
I dunno - again, I'm just an idiot. But it's cool to learn new things about hanging, and to be able to speculate about stuff pertaining to hanging that isn't captured explicitly by existing medical literature (that I've found yet, anyway!)
