In the 1971 film Johnny Talk Gun , a soldier who has been shot wakes up in a hospital without eyes, senses, a mouth, a nose, or limbs, but is conscious and able to think. The scenario describes a nightmare: a person is conscious but unable to communicate this to the outside world, while those around him believe he is unconscious. A distressing situation like that experienced by a patient in a coma or vegetative state—awake but unresponsive to stimuli—if he remained conscious. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) showed that one in four people with brain damage who are unresponsive to stimuli may have some degree of consciousness.
The team, led by Yelena J. Boden, of Harvard Medical School (USA), studied 241 people with brain damage who appeared to be unable to respond to external stimuli. Using advanced techniques such as functional brain scanners and electroencephalograms, they detected signs of brain activity in 25% of the patients, which, according to the authors, “suggests that they may be interacting with the outside world.”
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