aware

In a study published by The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that some coma patients may have the ability and the awareness to communicate.

When an area of the brain is active, blood flows through it. So going by this fact, they asked the patients (even though they're not sure if the patients can actually hear them) to imagine different scenes that will activate the different areas of the brain. An image of a forehand stroke hitting a tennis ball means Yes, while a scene of themselves navigating their way around a familiar place means No. The first one turns on the motor or the movement part, and the second one uses the spatial part of the brain. The researchers then monitored the blood activity using a brain scan.

One patient, a 29 year old vehicular accident victim, answered 5 out of 6 personal questions correctly. He was believed to be unconscious for five years. They were all wrong.

His father's name is Alexander.

"We were astonished when we saw he was able to correctly answer questions asked by simply changing his thoughts.", says Dr. Adrian Owen, leader of the team that developed this technique in Cambridge. "Not only did these scans tell us that the patient was not in a vegetative state, but, more importantly, for the first time in five years it provided the patient with a way of communicating his thoughts to the outside world."

Sources:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com
http://news.sky.com/
http://www.ft.com/
http://www.mirror.co.uk/
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMoa0905370