Symptoms – Coordination

Lastly in the back of the brain where you’ve got two separate arteries coming up with a back called the vertebral arteries, they supply the brainstem and an area of the brain called the Cerebellum, which is involved in coordination. And so with strokes that occur there, these can be much more difficult and actually much more dangerous. With respect to symptoms in that area, the cerebellum is involved in coordination. So if you want to pick up something, if I had a cup here and I wanted to pick it up, it takes all of these different muscles. My, my deltoid, my biceps, my triceps, all these muscles, it takes a plan so that they’re coordinating their movement and a nice smooth movement. And your cerebellum is what does that, when the cerebellum doesn’t work, that same nice, smooth movement would look something along the lines of this with each muscle overcompensating and over doing what it’s supposed to do. And so people can have balance issues and ability to stand. Walk. When the brainstems involved, other things can happen. Like you can develop vertigo, which is a sense of the room is spinning, double vision, sudden slurred speech. And these are all signs of brainstem strokes that can be quite dangerous. And again, I point out very difficult for the clinician or for the provider to sort of nail down because they’re hard to detect.