On communicating through the coma-like state

[image error]A study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports on how a subset of patients diagnosed as being in a coma-like state can be trained to show specific brain activity to answer yes / no questions despite seeming to be unconscious and unresponsive.

Many news reports seem to suggest that researchers have found a way of 'reaching inside coma' with a brain scanner to communicate with patients but the findings are much more modest, only 5 out of 54 patients could reliably produce ...