A 21-year-old patient has a head injury resulting from trauma and is unconscious. There are no other injuries. During the assessment what would the nurse expect to find when testing the patient's deep tendon reflexes?
a. Reflexes will be normal.
b. Reflexes cannot be elicited.
c. All reflexes will be diminished but present.
d. Some reflexes will be present, depending on the area of injury.
Question 2A patient has a severed spinal nerve as a result of trauma. Which statement is true in this situation?
a. Because there are 31 pairs of spinal nerves, no effect results if only one nerve is severed.
b. The dermatome served by this nerve will no longer experience any sensation.
c. The adjacent spinal nerves will continue to carry sensations for the dermatome served by the severed nerve.
d. A severed spinal nerve will only affect motor function of the patient because spinal nerves have no sensory component.
Question 3Which of these statements about the peripheral nervous system is correct?
a. The CNs enter the brain through the spinal cord.
b. Efferent fibers carry sensory input to the central nervous system through the spinal cord.
c. The peripheral nerves are inside the central nervous system and carry impulses through their motor fibers.
d. The peripheral nerves carry input to the central nervous system by afferent fibers and away from the central nervous system by efferent fibers.
Question 4A 30-year-old woman tells the nurse that she has been very unsteady and has had difficulty in maintaining her balance. Which area of the brain that is related to these findings would concern the nurse?
a. Thalamus
b. Brainstem
c. Cerebellum
d. Extrapyramidal tract
Question 5The ability that humans have to perform very skilled movements such as writing is controlled by the:
a. Basal ganglia.
b. Corticospinal tract.
c. Spinothalamic tract.
d. Extrapyramidal tract.
Question 6A patient with a lack of oxygen to his heart will have pain in his chest and possibly in the shoulder, arms, or jaw. The nurse knows that the best explanation why this occurs is which one of these statements?
a. A problem exists with the sensory cortex and its ability to discriminate the location.
b. The lack of oxygen in his heart has resulted in decreased amount of oxygen to the areas experiencing the pain.
c. The sensory cortex does not have the ability to localize pain in the heart; consequently, the pain is felt elsewhere.
d. A lesion has developed in the dorsal root, which is preventing the sensation from being transmitted normally.
Question 7While gathering equipment after an injection, a nurse accidentally received a prick from an improperly capped needle. To interpret this sensation, which of these areas must be intact?
a. Corticospinal tract, medulla, and basal ganglia
b. Pyramidal tract, hypothalamus, and sensory cortex
c. Lateral spinothalamic tract, thalamus, and sensory cortex
d. Anterior spinothalamic tract, basal ganglia, and sensory cortex
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