International Study Detects Consciousness in Unresponsive Patients

https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/about/newsroom/articles/consciousness-unresponsive-patients

by geox • 2 years ago

102 28 2 years ago

mbil• 2 years ago

Only tangentially related, but reminded me of this anecdote…

I know someone who was a nurse for many years. She told me that once she had a patient, a young man who had been comatose for months. Her and another nurse were changing the bedsheets when they accidentally dropped him, and his head smacked into the bed frame, quite hard. He immediately woke up from the coma.

moralestapia• 2 years ago

Thanks for sharing.

All of these stories are super interesting but I can imagine why it would be quite difficult to compile/release them.

BitwiseFool• 2 years ago

Did they still get in trouble?

ASalazarMX• 2 years ago

That was either a medical miracle, or the laziest young man in the world. Wonder what were his first words.

edulix• 2 years ago

It should be a new medical technique, which shall be named.. the frame method.

adastra22• 2 years ago

"OW!"

missedthecue• 2 years ago

Reminds me of Janusz Goraj, the the man from Poland who was blind for decades until he was hit by a car while crossing the street, slammed his head against pavement, and was instantly cured.

kranner• 2 years ago

Apparently it could have been "the large doses of anticoagulants mixed with other medicines" while he was being treated for his injuries that cured his blindness, according to this article:

https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/ureport/article/2001358795/m...

CoastalCoder• 2 years ago

Wow, this was actually anticipated in the movie Johnny Dangerously.

satisfice• 2 years ago

Also Eric Cartman on SouthPark dropped a Tivo into a bathtub and was electrocuted into a coma that took him to olden times.

PlunderBunny2• 2 years ago

Imagine being in an 'unresponsive' state and on life support for a long period of time - with what consciousness and sanity remain, you might wish to die, so if you were given covert instructions like the examples in the article, would you follow them, knowing that it might help with research, or would you ignore them in the hope that it would increase the possibility you would be declared brain-dead and taken off life support?

tivert• 2 years ago

Find out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD1IX1AFRZg

Your comment seems to totally miss what it would someone would actually feel in such a situation, so posits totally unrealistic thoughts. Who would have "help with research" at the top of mind? Who would choose to pass up a chance to communicate in favor of some weird probability of being killed later at some point?

PlunderBunny2• 2 years ago

Thank you for sharing that link - it was interesting and informative, and I realise now the situation is far more complicated than I had thought.

Hnrobert42• 2 years ago

There is a fascinating memoir called Ghost Boy. In it, a young man describes how he fell into a coma as a boy and awoke around 14 years old. However, upon awakening, he did not have control of his body. It was many more years before an aide suspected he was conscious.

His story is quite inspiring and well worth the read.

stevenwoo• 2 years ago

There’s a book and movie adaptation of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, written by a guy who was awake and mostly paralyzed but worked out how to communicate by blinking his eyes.

amy-petrik-214• 2 years ago

there's a great audiovisual piece called "One" by the moviesong band "Metallica" about the song is about a guy who blinks in morse code, "kill me" because he has locked in syndrome and all he can do is blink

burkaman• 2 years ago

He might be on HN, Wikipedia says he's a web developer now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Pistorius

amatecha• 2 years ago

In the past I had heard of "locked-in syndrome"[0] which seemed quite nightmarish to me, but I hadn't thought of the possibility of being "completely unresponsive" and still remaining conscious, perhaps living for years and years like this. Scary stuff :-|

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome

hughesjj2• 2 years ago

So much of what we perceived to be conscious is dependent with such a thing communicating to us it's consciousness.

I've never understood that internalized bias. Communications and consciousness seem like independent things to me.

hiatus• 2 years ago

As we cannot read thoughts, how else might consciousness manifest if not by word or deed?

m3kw94• 2 years ago

Consciousness in unconscious patients is a more accurate description

m3kw94• 2 years ago

I wonder when a one of these patients are in that state, they could be in a dream like state that seem real.

m3kw94• 2 years ago

Could the instruction following is like the muscle reflex, but on for brain where you are not responding to complex questions accurate it very simple ones

noobermin• 2 years ago

My only qualm with this is mri studies of brain patterns are notoriously suspect. For example, the Bennett dead salmon fmri "experiment."

Moreover, the article does say there are some flaws in the study, as the data is across different institutes that did the measurements differently and often families of comatose victims reached out to be tested, potentially introducing selection bias.

International Study Detects Consciousness in Unresponsive Patients

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