neurons

Responsibility key to implementing guidelines for treating disorders of consciousness

A disorder of consciousness is a state where consciousness has been affected by devastating damage to the brain. The diagnosis and health care of patients suffering from these disorders raise several clinical as well as ethical issues. And researchers are still looking for ways to solve them. Recent guidelines, European and American, offer important recommendations…

Indicators and criteria of consciousness for behaviourally unresponsive patients

Identifying and quantifying residual consciousness in patients with disorders of consciousness is notoriously challenging but increasingly urgent. There is a high rate of misdiagnosis among patients suffering from these disorders, particularly between vegetative states/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome and minimally conscious states. A recent BMC Medical Ethics publication explores how operational indicators previously introduced to assess consciousness…

neurons

Calling all professionals working with Disorders of Consciousness!

As part of the International Brain Injury Association’s Disorders of Consciousness Special Interest Group, we invite professionals working in the field to request their participation in a survey. The intent is to explore professional opinions relevant to the recommendations included in the newly issued Guidelines on Disorders of Consciousness from the European Academy of Neurology…

child eye

Are you conscious? Looking for reliable indicators

How can we be sure that a person in front of us is conscious? This might seem like a näive question, but it actually resulted in one of the trickiest and most intriguing philosophical problems, classically known as “the other minds problem.” Yet this is more than just a philosophical game: reliable detection of conscious…