A recent study found that 25 per cent of patients in unresponsive states were shown to respond cognitively to instructions on a brain scan. A recent study found that about one in four people who have disorders of consciousness, such as being in a coma or a minimally conscious state, may still have cognitive function. Even though they can't move or speak, these individuals were shown via brain scans to be able to sometimes perform cognitive tasks following instruction.
The study looked into participant data from 2006 to 2023, gathered from various healthcare settings across six multinational sites, including some in Europe. It looked into the prevalence of "cognitive motor dissociation" based on the data of 353 patients who have suffered severe brain injuries following events such as severe trauma, strokes, or lack of oxygen after a heart attack. "Cognitive motor dissociation" describes a state where individuals who cannot physically respond to commands still exhibit brain activity in areas typically responsible for movement.
“Some patients with severe brain injury do not appear to be processing their external world. However, when they are assessed with advanced techniques such as task-based fMRI and EEG, we can detect brain activity that suggests otherwise,” Dr Yelena Bodien, the lead study author from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital’s research institute in the US, said in . The findings were published in the .
The patients were divided into tw.