Waking The Brain

After experiencing a severe brain injury, people can slip into a coma. Some of these people begin to show signs of intermittent awareness, but are still not able to communicate. This state is called “minimal consciousness,” and it can leave friends and loved ones of those who are trapped in it feeling helpless and heartbroken.

But now, researchers have found that minimally conscious people responded remarkably well to a treatment of daily 20-minute sessions of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for five consecutive days. These patients, who had been minimally conscience for at least three months, were able to respond to commands, recognize items, and, in a few cases, even communicate.

tCDS stimulates neurons with low-level electricity. In this study, recently published in Brain Injury, the tCDS treatment was applied to the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in high-level cognitive functions including consciousness. The prefrontal cortex is also connected to other important hubs in the brain, allowing it to send electrical signals outward.

Waves of electrical activity moving outward from the prefrontal cortex into other areas of the brain is the hallmark of consciousness. This study’s success in prompting some of these patterns with stimulation suggests that scientists may be able to help people with consciousness disorders to “awaken” partially. Further, the development of a device to facilitate communication between people with consciousness disorders and others may be possible.