A man in a permanent vegetative state reportedly has been able to communicate ... Since then, doctors have said he has no signs of awareness or ability to communicate. But when lead researcher ...

For many years, patients in a vegetative state were believed to have no awareness of self or environment. But in recent years, doctors have made use of fMRI to examine brain activity in such patients.

Awareness was detected in three other patients previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. The study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that scans can detect signs of awareness in ...

In a study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers showed it was possible to communicate with and detect awareness in people in a vegetative state using functional ...

All the patients had the same terrible diagnosis: brain damage that marooned them in a “vegetative state” — alive but without any sense of awareness of themselves or the world around them.

“Persistent vegetative ... the absence of awareness”. However, Mr Justice Hayden said: “This condition has been, historically, categorised as a ‘persistent vegetative state’.

"A vegetative state is absence of responsiveness and awareness due to overwhelming dysfunction of the cerebral hemispheres, with sufficient sparing of the diencephalon and brain stem to preserve ...