Coma Science

by Laureys

• ISBN13: 9780444534323
• ISBN10: 0444534326
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780080962252
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-12-03
• Publisher: Elsevier Science

Summary

Understanding consciousness is one of the major unsolved problems in medical science. Recent studies have underscored that recovery of consciousness after severe brain injury remains poorly understood. Many of these investigations are very much in the public eye in part because of their relationship to controversies about end-of-life decisions in permanently unconscious patients and the relationship to one of the major philosophical, sociological, political, and religious questions of humankind.

Author Biography

The editors Steven Laureys (Lige), Adrian Owen (Cambridge) and Nicholas Schiff (New York) are leaders in the field. They have here brought together an outstanding group of neuroscientists and clinical investigators engaged in the study of coma and consciousness and mechanisms underlying large-scale cortical integration, state-of-the-art neuroimaging studies of sleep, anesthesia and patients with disorders of consciousness, and experts in the fields of the neurology of consciousness and ethics who addressed the larger context in which the emerging neuroscience will be received and integrated.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	p. v
Foreword	p. ix
Foreword	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
The problem of unreportable awareness	p. 1
How can we know if patients in coma, vegetative state or minimally conscious state are conscious?	p. 11
Contemporary controversies in the definition of death	p. 21
Behavioral assessment in patients with disorders of consciousness: gold standard or fool's gold?	p. 33
The problem of aphasia in the assessment of consciousness in brain-damaged patients	p. 49
Predictors of short-term outcome in brain-injured patients with disorders of consciousness	p. 63
Natural history of recovery from brain injury after prolonged disorders of consciousness: outcome of patients admitted to inpatient rehabilitation with 1-4 year follow-up	p. 73
Cognitive deficits after traumatic coma	p. 89
Long-term survival after severe TBI: clinical and forensic aspects	p. 111
Waking up the brain: a case study of stimulation-induced wakeful unawareness during anesthesia	p. 125
Consciousness and epilepsy: why are complex-partial seizures complex?	p. 147
You are only coming through in waves: wakefulness variability and assessment in patients with impaired consciousness	p. 171
Disorders of consciousness: further pathophysiological insights using motor cortex transcranial magnetic stimulation	p. 191
A perturbational approach for evaluating the brain's capacity for consciousness	p. 201
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy and diffusion tensor imaging in coma survivors: promises and pitfalls	p. 215
A multimodal approach to the assessment of patients with disorders of consciousness	p. 231
Executive functions in the absence of behavior: functional imaging of the minimally conscious state	p. 249
Reaching across the abyss: recent advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging and their potential relevance to disorders of consciousness	p. 261
Another kind of "BOLD Response": answering multiple-choice questions via online decoded single-trial brain signals	p. 275
Pharmacotherapy to enhance arousal: what is known and what is not	p. 293
Intrathecal administration of GABA agonists in the vegetative state	p. 317
Different beliefs about pain perception in the vegetative and minimally conscious states: a European survey of medical and paramedical professionals	p. 329
Life can be worth living in locked-in syndrome	p. 339
Defining personal loss after severe brain damage	p. 353
Moral significance of phenomenal consciousnes	p. 361
The ethics of measuring and modulating consciousness: the imperative of minding time	p. 371
Theoretical approaches to the diagnosis of altered states of consciousness	p. 383
A new era of coma and consciousness science	p. 399
Subject Index	p. 413
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.