A New England Journal of Medicine study shows 1 in 6 clinically unresponsive ICU patients show electroencephalography (EEG) patterns of brain activity when spoken to soon after acute brain injury. A dissociation between the absence of behavioral responses to motor commands and the evidence of brain activation in response to these commands in EEG recordings was found in 15% of patients in a consecutive series of patients with acute brain injury.

A total of 16 of 104 unresponsive patients had brain activation detected by EEG at a median of 4 days after injury. The condition in 8 of these 16 patients and in 23 of 88 patients without brain activation improved such that they were able to follow commands before discharge.

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