Eye-opening study: 1 in 4 ‘unresponsive’ brain-injury patients actually can do ‘cognitive tasks’

Those people who have sustained brain injuries and are hospitalized in an unresponsive state sometimes provide the biggest puzzles in health care.

Sometimes their condition is a result of an accident, or injury, and sometimes it may come about because of a heart attack or stroke.

There are no strict rules for such cases as some patients live for years and then die without returning to consciousness, while others spring suddenly awake after weeks or even months in what appears to be a coma.