Consciousness has two main components: wakefulness and awareness. The vegetative
state is characterized by wakefulness without awareness. Recent functional neuroimaging …

We review the nosological criteria and functional neuroanatomical basis for brain death,
coma, vegetative state, minimally conscious state, and the locked-in state. Functional …

Background Previously published studies have reported that up to 43% of patients with
disorders of consciousness are erroneously assigned a diagnosis of vegetative state (VS). …

Conscious perception, like the sight of a coffee cup, seems to involve the brain identifying a
stimulus. But conscious input activates more brain regions than are needed to identify coffee …

The concept of consciousness continues to defy definition and elude the grasp of philosophical
and scientific efforts to formulate a testable construct that maps to human experience. …

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to demonstrate preserved conscious
awareness in a patient fulfilling the criteria for a diagnosis of vegetative state. When asked to …

One challenging aspect of the clinical assessment of brain-injured, unresponsive patients is
the lack of an objective measure of consciousness that is independent of the subject’s ability …

Previous studies exploring the neural substrates of executive functioning used task‐specific
analyses, which might not be the most appropriate approach due to the difficulty of precisely …

The function of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep is still unknown. One prevailing hypothesis
suggests that REM sleep is important in processing memory traces. Here, using positron …

Background Some patients awaken from coma (that is, open the eyes) but remain unresponsive
(that is, only showing reflex movements without response to command). This syndrome …