Kraft hurriedly searched his knowledge of brain injuries, but his brain offered nothing that explained what was happening.
The consequences of central nervous system damage were varied, and changes in the eyes were certainly among them. They ranged from visual problems to motor issues, including abnormal pupil size, blurred or missing areas in the field of vision, and unusual eye movements.
Generally, patients had a good chance of developing one or more of these symptoms, depending on the location and severity of the injury.
Working backward from the anatomy, nystagmus could originate in several different functional areas: the vestibular system, which sensed the body's position and lay in the inner ears; the oculomotor nerve nuclei in the midbrain; or the cerebellum, which coordinated movement and sat at the back of the skull.
So what kind of trauma could strike several functional areas with such precision that, despite their other symptoms differing, the patients all developed the same upward vertical nystagmus?
Believing that would be like believing that a falling object had happened to knock loose an old blood clot in a passerby's brain, restoring blood flow to a dead zone all at once. Anyone who believed that needed to have their head examined.
There had to be another cause, a simpler and more direct one, most likely something happening through normal processes rather than a pathological one. After all, it would be absurd for unrelated injuries to coincidentally cause the same specific pathological symptom. But it made sense if some unknown factor triggered an innate reflex.
It was like everyone in a dark dormitory suddenly hearing their morning alarms go off. The first thing to suspect wouldn't be that everyone had independently set their alarms for the middle of the night. It would be the rain or the curtains left