When someone is in a coma, they cannot interact with their environment. The brain is still working, however, and the degree of brain activity varies from patient to patient. New tools for mapping brain activity have helped doctors illuminate what is happening inside the brain, which informs their treatment and care.
Someone who is in a coma is unconscious and has minimal brain activity. They're alive, but can't be woken up and show no signs of being aware. The person's eyes will be closed and they'll appear to be unresponsive to their environment.
Most individuals that recover from coma exhibit signs of preserved brain function, such as the presence of neurological reflexes. Some neurological reflexes that a doctor may look for in coma patients include: Pupillary reactivity. The pupils should shrink in response to a light being shone in the eyes.
And the answer is yes. The brain is incredibly resilient and possesses the ability to repair itself through the process of neuroplasticity. This phenomenon is the reason why many brain injury survivors can make astounding recoveries.
Coma is a state of unarousable unconsciousness due to dysfunction of the brain's ascending reticular activating system (ARAS), which is responsible for arousal and the maintenance of wakefulness.
Brain death: Irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem. A person who is brain dead is dead, with no chance of revival. Coma: A state of profound unresponsiveness as a result of severe illness or brain injury.
Usually, coma patients have their eyes closed and cannot see what happens around them. But their ears keep receiving sounds from the environment. In some cases, the brains of coma patients can process sounds, for example the voice of someone speaking to them [2].
Can Your Loved One Hear You? During a coma, the individual is unconscious, meaning they are unable to respond to any sounds. However, the brain may still be able to pick up on sounds from loved ones. In fact, some studies suggest talking and touching a loved one while they are in a coma may help them recover.
Overcoming Post-Traumatic Amnesia
Post-traumatic amnesia is a common stage after a brain injury where the survivor struggles with memory, especially when emerging from a coma. Signs of post-traumatic amnesia can include confusion, impaired memory, and unusual behavior.
People in a coma will not age like conscious people living life. Muscles weaken & emaciate. The damaged part of the brain might deteriorate as a result of inflammation to the area.
Yet many people who have recovered from comas report dreams into which something of the outside world penetrated. Others recall nightmares that seemed to go on and on. Whether they dream or not probably depends on the cause of the coma.
In comatose patients, depending on the stage of their coma, the waveforms are altered. As the coma deepens, the EEG device will eventually show a flat line instead of a wave – this stage is considered to be the turning point between a living brain and a deceased brain.
People in a coma are completely unresponsive. They do not move, do not react to light or sound and cannot feel pain. Their eyes are closed. The brain responds to extreme trauma by effectively 'shutting down'.
Depth of coma
Those who show no motor response have a 3% chance of making a good recovery whereas those who show flexion have a better than 15% chance.
Severe brain injury is usually defined as being a condition where the patient has been in an unconscious state for 6 hours or more, or a post-traumatic amnesia of 24 hours or more.
People who do wake up from a coma usually come round gradually. They may be very agitated and confused to begin with. Some people will make a full recovery and be completely unaffected by the coma. Others will have disabilities caused by the damage to their brain.
Coma is a state of prolonged loss of consciousness. It can have a variety of causes, including traumatic head injury, stroke, brain tumor, or drug or alcohol intoxication. A coma may even be caused by an underlying illness, such as diabetes or an infection. Coma is a medical emergency.
Annie Shapiro (1913–2003) was a Canadian apron shop owner who was in a coma for 29 years because of a massive stroke and suddenly awakened in 1992. Apart from the patients in the true story Awakenings, Shapiro was the longest a person has been in a coma like state and woken up.
Brain death is not the same as coma, because someone in a coma is unconscious but still alive. Brain death occurs when a critically ill patient dies sometime after being placed on life support. This situation can occur after, for example, a heart attack or stroke.
A comatose patient may open his eyes, move and even cry while still remaining unconscious. His brain-stem reflexes are attached to a nonfunctioning cortex. Reflex without reflection. Many professionals speak of this condition as a ''persistent vegetative state.
What is a coma? A coma, sometimes also called persistent vegetative state, is a profound or deep state of unconsciousness. Persistent vegetative state is not brain-death. An individual in a state of coma is alive but unable to move or respond to his or her environment.
Typically, a coma does not last more than a few days or couple of weeks. In some rare cases, a person might stay in a coma for several weeks, months or even years. Depending on what caused the person to go into a coma, some patients are able to return to their normal lives after leaving the hospital.
Most comas do not last for more than two to four weeks. A patient's potential for recovery often relates to their score on what's known as the Glasgow Coma Scale tool, which assesses three areas: eye opening, verbal response to a command and voluntary movements.
Roving eye movements are slow, conjugate, lateral, and to-and-fro excursions, generally seen in normal sleep and in comatose patients with toxic, metabolic strokes 1.