What is Coma?
First of all, let's briefly talk about what a coma is and when it occurs. Coma means 'deep sleep' in Greek. Although it is derived from the word sleep coma and sleep are two very different situations. As you know, a person in a coma does not react to any influences around him and the state of unconsciousness is long-lasting. Coma can occur as a result of various traumas and diseases, or it can be started artificially by doctors for treatment purposes. The reason for applying artificial coma is to help the healing process by reducing the amount of energy the brain needs.
Coma can have many different causes. Some of the conditions that can cause a coma are a long-term decrease or increase in blood sugar in diabetes patients, the inability to reach enough oxygen to the brain during situations such as heart attack, stroke, or drowning, severe inflammations in the brain such as encephalitis or meningitis, drug overdoses and exposure to carbon monoxide. It can also result in a coma in accidents, sports injuries, and severe blows to the head.
In the treatment, first of all, the vital values of the patient such as breathing and circulation are taken under control. Before the test results are available, the doctor may give the patient glucose or antibiotics in case of diabetic shock or case of a brain infection. Based on the test results, treatment is determined by the underlying cause of the coma.
While the coma is sometimes completely treated and the patient can regain normal functions, sometimes it can leave serious brain damage and the patient may not wake up again. There may be consequences such as a permanent vegetative state or brain death.
Can a comatose patient's brain respond to sounds?
Coma patients are known to be unconscious, but how true is this? Some relatives of patients do not leave the patient alone during these periods and try to communicate without knowing whether the patient can hear them or not. According to some, these conversations make the patient feel their love and support and contribute to the healing process. Well, if so, wouldn't this indicate that comatose patients are not as unconscious as we thought?
In a study, it is investigated whether can we predict whether comatose patients will wake up from a coma according to their responses to sounds. The response of the patient's brain to the sounds played to the patient is measured with a system called Electroencephalography (EEG).
The results of the study show that patients who only respond to sounds and start to distinguish different frequencies are those who can wake up from a coma later on. One of the conclusions drawn from this is that patients in coma respond to sounds. The other result is that it can be predicted whether the patients are likely to wake up from a coma according to the responses of their brains.
New treatment discovered to wake comatose patients
Patients can wake up from an artificial coma under the control of a doctor, or patients who are treated for a coma can wake up after a while. So, are there any studies for patients who cannot wake up from a coma for a long time? Of course, there is. One of them is Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation therapy.
Studies show that minimally conscious patients responded significantly to the five-day course of 20 minutes of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation therapy. Patients in a coma for at least three months were able to respond to commands, remember objects, and in some cases even communicate.
The treatment works by stimulating neurons with a low level of electricity, and a recent study published in the journal Brain Injury describes how the treatment is applied to the patient's prefrontal cortex, which is associated with other important areas of higher cognitive function and consciousness.
Waves of electrical activity passing from the prefrontal cortex to other areas are an indicator of consciousness, and the stimulation of these emitted electrical responses has been successful in the study, and these findings may one day help researchers wake comatose patients permanently or temporarily.
After Coma
A certain time is required for the patient who wakes up from the coma to recover. Especially a patient who has been in a coma for a long time may need to learn to walk again by taking physiotherapy for a while.
Some patients may have permanent cognitive or physical problems as a result of brain damage. In addition to physiotherapy, they may also need psychological support. Of course, it can happen for patients who recover completely after a coma and have no problems.
All these vary according to the cause of the coma, its level, the general health status of the person, and the time spent in the coma.
Interesting Experiences
Let's talk about a case of coma that baffled even doctors. When an Australian man, Ben McMahon, awoke from an accidental coma, he could not speak his native English but began to speak Chinese fluently. It is known that Ben had tried to learn Chinese at school before but was never fluent. Speech and language therapist Dr. Yvonne Wren explains that this may be because the area of the brain where Ben learned his mother tongue was damaged during the accident, while the area where he learned the second language was not damaged. He says it is possible that access to the mother tongue blocked accelerated his access to the second language.
Another similar incident happened to a young man named Sandra Ralic. His mother tongue was Croatian, but after waking up from a coma for 24 hours, she was unable to speak Croatian. Instead, she was able to speak German fluently. Similar to the previous case, Sandra had just started learning German and was not fluent.
Of course, the reason why I mention these two cases is not the contribution of the coma to language learning. In both of these examples, the patients were obviously exposed to the second language in some way. This second language information recorded in the brain seems to come to the fore as soon as the concept of mother tongue, which prevents active use, disappears. With this feature of the brain, we can encounter a similar way, although not exactly the same, not only in cases where language centers are damaged but also in other situations such as the hearing sense of a blind person being more developed.
So why is it important that the brain compensates for its dysfunction in a different way?
Think about what we can do by using or triggering this feature. More advanced senses, acceleration of language learning, maybe even a language that has been exposed only by watching TV series or movies can reach the level of the mother tongue overnight. It's up to your imagination.
If we come to the relevance of all this to coma… As you know, the brain suffers a kind of loss of function in a coma. So, what does the brain do to make up for this deficiency when it cannot connect with the outside world? What do you think our brain is doing in a coma, which is a longer and deeper sleep, while it does not stay idle even at night when we sleep to rest and allows us to dream?
Studies show that the brain does not experience any dream cycles during a coma, but some patients can talk about dreams after waking up from the coma. In other words, it seems impossible to predict exactly what the brain is doing during a coma. We know that it is showing minimal activity for now. I don't know about you, but for me, the fantastic part starts here.
I don't know if you've ever come across it before, but in some movies, the spirits of people in a coma are depicted wandering among people like a ghost. Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that the spirits of people in a coma are walking among us. However, if you have read my previous articles, you know me, I like to discuss these kinds of stuff as if they were real. For example, now I will think about how the soul of a person in deep sleep can roam freely in the real world.
How? By Astral Projection...
Even in a normal sleep cycle, people talk about being able to take the dream world to the next level. Two important examples of these ways are shown in lucid dreaming and astral travel. If you've never heard of these two concepts before, let me explain briefly. Lucid dreaming is the person's being conscious and able to control his dream during the dream. Astral travel, on the other hand, is a technique where the soul leaves the body and can travel long distances as an advanced dimension of lucid dreaming. Unlike lucid dreaming, you cannot control the dream in astral projection because it is a journey into real spaces. In other words, it is an experience that can be encountered with more realistic and unexpected events.
Assuming that a comatose patient's brain has a communication breakdown with the outside world, he will try to close this gap by returning to his inner world... In theory, it seems impossible for a person to leave his body and wander in the real world with astral travel. What do you think?
Let's switch from fantasy to science fiction. Have you watched the movie OtherLife? If you haven't watched it, beware, spoilers are on the way. I mentioned this movie before in my article titled “New memories with bio-programming". Of course, gaining new experiences with bio software was interesting enough, but the purpose of producing this technology was just as interesting in my opinion. That is, our protagonist wanted to use the aforementioned technology to wake up his comatose brother. What I want to talk about here is the experiences that this software can make people see or experience in a coma, rather than bio software. If it was possible to change and direct the dreams of the comatose patient (if he is dreaming, of course), could we wake these patients in a shorter time?
Maybe not for every coma type, but I believe that it can be used in some situations, especially where the cause is not understood. For example, let's consider a patient whose coma-causing disease has been treated and is expected to wake up from the coma. We do not know if there is a situation that prevents the brain from waking up for a traumatic reason. In such a situation, why not try to induce some kind of dreaming by changing the trauma memory in a way that can save the person from psychological trauma? Again, to achieve this, we need to trigger a lucid dream-like activity so that the person can consciously direct the various scenarios we present to him.
Imagine that we can show the patient the dream scenario we want by sending electrical currents to the brain, as in the Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation therapy I mentioned earlier, or by connecting the brain to the computer with technology like Neuralink. It doesn't sound like such a remote possibility. What do you think?
To sum it up, we cannot ignore the fact that there are patients who dream, although coma is very different from sleep and is a state where dream cycles are said to be absent. This, in my opinion, shows promise that different treatment methods can be developed using dreams. Apart from all this, although it sounds like fantasy, I think that the mind or soul of coma patients (however you want to imagine it) cannot be that disconnected from the real world. After all, why should we ignore this possibility when there are so many different ways and techniques of controlling dreams and our brain is an organ that does not like to be idle?
What is your comment on this? You can also talk about research that I have not mentioned, or you can tell your theories. I would be happy to receive your ideas.
Resources
https://bilimgenc.tubitak.gov.tr/makale/hastalar-neden-uyutulur
https://info.uwe.ac.uk/news/uwenews/news.aspx?id=3310
https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2019.00019
https://www.bilgiustam.com/koma-nedir-belirtileri-teshis-ve-tedavisi/
https://www.bustle.com/p/what-happens-when-youre-in-a-coma-your-body-reacts-in-strange-ways-when-your-brain-function-shuts-down-3067212
https://www.fanaticalfuturist.com/2017/05/scientists-use-a-new-breakthrough-treatment-to-wake-up-coma-patients/
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coma/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20371103#:~:text=Doctors%20may%20give%20breathing%20assistance,the%20cause%20of%20the%20coma
https://www.oddee.com/item_97859.aspx
Also see these;
Personal Adventure Fields Dreams
New Memories by Bio-Programming
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