Only tangentially related, but reminded me of this anecdote…
I know someone who was a nurse for many years. She told me that once she had a patient, a young man who had been comatose for months. Her and another nurse were changing the bedsheets when they accidentally dropped him, and his head smacked into the bed frame, quite hard. He immediately woke up from the coma.
Reminds me of Janusz Goraj, the the man from Poland who was blind for decades until he was hit by a car while crossing the street, slammed his head against pavement, and was instantly cured.
Apparently it could have been "the large doses of anticoagulants mixed with other medicines" while he was being treated for his injuries that cured his blindness, according to this article:
There is a fascinating memoir called Ghost Boy. In it, a young man describes how he fell into a coma as a boy and awoke around 14 years old. However, upon awakening, he did not have control of his body. It was many more years before an aide suspected he was conscious.
His story is quite inspiring and well worth the read.
There’s a book and movie adaptation of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, written by a guy who was awake and mostly paralyzed but worked out how to communicate by blinking his eyes.
there's a great audiovisual piece called "One" by the moviesong band "Metallica" about the song is about a guy who blinks in morse code, "kill me" because he has locked in syndrome and all he can do is blink
In the past I had heard of "locked-in syndrome"[0] which seemed quite nightmarish to me, but I hadn't thought of the possibility of being "completely unresponsive" and still remaining conscious, perhaps living for years and years like this. Scary stuff :-|
It's more of a framing thing, like 'failed to reject the null hypothesis' or 'not guilty' instead of 'accepted the null hypothesis' or 'innocent'.
Consciousness can exist independent of our ability, or even our possibility to recognize it. That doesn't mean things we can otherwise perceive necessarily lacks conscious. Also imo consciousness is a matter of magnitude, not a binary classification.
I get a lot of people will say 'well what's the relevance of a conscious entity that I cannot communicate with', and my response would be 'well communication or action may be unidirectional, in that we affect the conscious entity even if it cannot affect us'
This is another reason I want to be cremated. The case of my formerly conscious arrangement of grey matter is something this consciousness wants to scramble beyond repair when death or permacoma comes for me.
My only qualm with this is mri studies of brain patterns are notoriously suspect. For example, the Bennett dead salmon fmri "experiment."
Moreover, the article does say there are some flaws in the study, as the data is across different institutes that did the measurements differently and often families of comatose victims reached out to be tested, potentially introducing selection bias.
Imagine being in an 'unresponsive' state and on life support for a long period of time - with what consciousness and sanity remain, you might wish to die, so if you were given covert instructions like the examples in the article, would you follow them, knowing that it might help with research, or would you ignore them in the hope that it would increase the possibility you would be declared brain-dead and taken off life support?
Your comment seems to totally miss what it would someone would actually feel in such a situation, so posits totally unrealistic thoughts. Who would have "help with research" at the top of mind? Who would choose to pass up a chance to communicate in favor of some weird probability of being killed later at some point?
Could the instruction following is like the muscle reflex, but on for brain where you are not responding to complex questions accurate it very simple ones
Only tangentially related, but reminded me of this anecdote…
I know someone who was a nurse for many years. She told me that once she had a patient, a young man who had been comatose for months. Her and another nurse were changing the bedsheets when they accidentally dropped him, and his head smacked into the bed frame, quite hard. He immediately woke up from the coma.
Reminds me of Janusz Goraj, the the man from Poland who was blind for decades until he was hit by a car while crossing the street, slammed his head against pavement, and was instantly cured.
Apparently it could have been "the large doses of anticoagulants mixed with other medicines" while he was being treated for his injuries that cured his blindness, according to this article:
https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/ureport/article/2001358795/m...
Wow, this was actually anticipated in the movie Johnny Dangerously.
That was either a medical miracle, or the laziest young man in the world. Wonder what were his first words.
It should be a new medical technique, which shall be named.. the frame method.
Percussive Rehabilitation
In Chriopractic term, a brain adjustment
"OW!"
Also Eric Cartman on SouthPark dropped a Tivo into a bathtub and was electrocuted into a coma that took him to olden times.
Thanks for sharing.
All of these stories are super interesting but I can imagine why it would be quite difficult to compile/release them.
Did they still get in trouble?
There is a fascinating memoir called Ghost Boy. In it, a young man describes how he fell into a coma as a boy and awoke around 14 years old. However, upon awakening, he did not have control of his body. It was many more years before an aide suspected he was conscious.
His story is quite inspiring and well worth the read.
He might be on HN, Wikipedia says he's a web developer now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Pistorius
There’s a book and movie adaptation of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, written by a guy who was awake and mostly paralyzed but worked out how to communicate by blinking his eyes.
there's a great audiovisual piece called "One" by the moviesong band "Metallica" about the song is about a guy who blinks in morse code, "kill me" because he has locked in syndrome and all he can do is blink
based on the book "Johnny Got His Gun", IIRC
In the past I had heard of "locked-in syndrome"[0] which seemed quite nightmarish to me, but I hadn't thought of the possibility of being "completely unresponsive" and still remaining conscious, perhaps living for years and years like this. Scary stuff :-|
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome
So much of what we perceived to be conscious is dependent with such a thing communicating to us it's consciousness.
I've never understood that internalized bias. Communications and consciousness seem like independent things to me.
As we cannot read thoughts, how else might consciousness manifest if not by word or deed?
It's more of a framing thing, like 'failed to reject the null hypothesis' or 'not guilty' instead of 'accepted the null hypothesis' or 'innocent'.
Consciousness can exist independent of our ability, or even our possibility to recognize it. That doesn't mean things we can otherwise perceive necessarily lacks conscious. Also imo consciousness is a matter of magnitude, not a binary classification.
I get a lot of people will say 'well what's the relevance of a conscious entity that I cannot communicate with', and my response would be 'well communication or action may be unidirectional, in that we affect the conscious entity even if it cannot affect us'
This is another reason I want to be cremated. The case of my formerly conscious arrangement of grey matter is something this consciousness wants to scramble beyond repair when death or permacoma comes for me.
My only qualm with this is mri studies of brain patterns are notoriously suspect. For example, the Bennett dead salmon fmri "experiment."
Moreover, the article does say there are some flaws in the study, as the data is across different institutes that did the measurements differently and often families of comatose victims reached out to be tested, potentially introducing selection bias.
I wonder when a one of these patients are in that state, they could be in a dream like state that seem real.
Imagine being in an 'unresponsive' state and on life support for a long period of time - with what consciousness and sanity remain, you might wish to die, so if you were given covert instructions like the examples in the article, would you follow them, knowing that it might help with research, or would you ignore them in the hope that it would increase the possibility you would be declared brain-dead and taken off life support?
Find out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD1IX1AFRZg
Your comment seems to totally miss what it would someone would actually feel in such a situation, so posits totally unrealistic thoughts. Who would have "help with research" at the top of mind? Who would choose to pass up a chance to communicate in favor of some weird probability of being killed later at some point?
Thank you for sharing that link - it was interesting and informative, and I realise now the situation is far more complicated than I had thought.
Consciousness in unconscious patients is a more accurate description
Could the instruction following is like the muscle reflex, but on for brain where you are not responding to complex questions accurate it very simple ones