Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

So, why would they want to depict this action as a series of "reflexes" where nerves were synapsing at the spinal cord and sending messages to his muscles- operating him like a marionete?

Essentially, they were saying that he was one of these:

The reason is because of what Kennedy was doing, which is: REACHING FOR HIS THROAT because he was shot in the throat. The man was struggling to breathe, and he could feel that bullet in his throat. He was trying to dislodge it, to cough it up. He was loosening his tie. It wasn't a series of stretch reflexes, and it certainly wasn't a "Thorburn position." How stupid. Anyone who's had a freshman course in Neurology knows it wasn't that.