In that setting, everyone needs to know what we mean by an “unconscious” patient. Consciousness is not “all or nothing.” We can be more or less awake, more or less conscious. Consciousness ...

Claassen agreed, and said he tells every doctor he trains, “When you’re at the bedside, in the room of a patient that is apparently unresponsive, assume that they are actually conscious,” he ...

For a long time, it was believed these patients simply couldn't have any conscious experiences. In the past two decades, researchers have realized that this assumption is often false. One problem ...

Some comatose patients may be conscious and able to feel pain so life support should not automatically be switched off, a study suggests. Ground-breaking research has discovered that infrared ...

Some of these patients will recover limited signs of awareness, known as a “ minimally conscious state,” such as the ability to respond to instructions or follow a moving object with their eyes.

Birch is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and author of “The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI.” A stroke, a traumatic brain ...

These patients do not acknowledge the examiner; they do not attend or track objects that are presented to them; their movements are non-purposeful; they do not speak. Minimally conscious state ...

"Minimally conscious patients cannot communicate," said lead study author Nicholas Schiff of the Weill Cornell Medical College department of neurology and neuroscience during the teleconference.

These patients live in a profound isolation, their conscious minds trapped inside unresponsive bodies. Doctors are just beginning to grasp what it might take to help them. For Ian, the signs were ...

AMSTERDAM — Many urologic procedures can be safely performed with the use of conscious sedation rather than general anesthesia, and both clinicians and their patients say they prefer the lighter ...