New York, February 4 -- In what may provide a deep insight into human consciousness, one of the most long-standing medical mysteries, scientists claim to have found that patients in a “vegetative state” may in fact be aware of everything around them, and also capable of changing brain activity at will.
When patients in coma eventually open their eyes on being intensively stimulated, this return of “wakefulness without awareness of self and environment” is accompanied by reflexive motor activity only, devoid of any voluntary interaction with the environment, and the condition is called a vegetative state.
Details of the study
