Vegetative state

The researchers at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge and the University Hospital of Liege in Belgium have developed a technique of connecting electrodes to the brain helping it to attain consciousne

The 60-year-old nurse is living in a persistent vegetative state for the last 37 years in a Mumbai hospital after a brutal sexual assault.

In a vegetative state, a patient remains awake but not conscious of his surroundings.

Mercy death plea for Aruna
Moved by Aruna’s pain and agony, her friend and social activist Pinki Virani petitioned the Supreme Court seeking a hastened death for the woman, who she says is "virtually a dead person."

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