Vegetative Patients Can Still Learn

enigma48 writes to mention that a collaborative study between the Universities of Buenos Aires and Cambridge have demonstrated that individuals in a vegetative state can still learn and demonstrate at least a partial consciousness. Their findings are reported in a recent online edition of Nature Neuroscience. "It is the first time that scientists have tested whether patients in vegetative and minimally conscious states can learn. By establishing that they can, it is believed that this simple test will enable practitioners to assess the patient's consciousness without the need of imaging. The abstract is also available in the advance issue of Nature."

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Nothing new here

[UncleWilly]

Scientists have found that some teens in a vegetative and minimally conscious state, despite lacking the means of reporting awareness themselves, can learn and thereby demonstrate at least a partial consciousness. By using classical Pavlovian conditioning, the researchers played a tone immediately prior to shotgunning cannabis into a patient's open mouth. After some time training, the patients would start to inhale when the tone played but before the shotgun.