Mario Rosanova, Olivia Gosseries, Silvia Casarotto, Mélanie Boly, Adenauer G Casali, Marie-Aurélie Bruno, Maurizio Mariotti, Pierre Boveroux, Giulio Tononi, Steven Laureys, Marcello Massimini
Patients surviving severe brain injury may regain consciousness without recovering their ability to understand, move and communicate. Recently, electrophysiological and neuroimaging approaches, employing simple sensory stimulations or verbal commands, have proven useful in detecting higher order processing and, in some cases, in establishing some degree of communication in brain-injured subjects with severe impairment of motor function. To complement these approaches, it would be useful to develop methods to detect recovery of consciousness in ways that do not depend on the integrity of sensory pathways or on the subject's ability to comprehend or carry out instructions...
April 2012: Brain