The Unconscious brain

The brain is a very mysterious thing. It causes people to love, hate, and discover many interesting things. The brain can also go into its own world. When I say a brain can go into its own world I mean it can slip into a coma or worse a vegetative state. When brains go into a coma it is in a deep unconscious state. Comas are usually caused by illnesses or traumatic brain injuries to the head and brain. Comas usually last up to six weeks, and when the person wakes up from it they usually regain normal bodily function. We know that people in a coma are sleeping, but unlike everyone else when they go to sleep people in a coma can not be woken up. People in a coma also can not respond to any form of stimulation.

Doctors use the Glasgow Coma Scale to determine how severe a case of coma a person has. This scale reads the persons neurological brain function, and assesses the level of consciousness a person is at. If a person scores a 15 on the scale then they are almost normal and probably have minimal brain damage. There is another scale that is used called the Rancho Los Amigos Scale. This scale is used within the first weeks or months of the brain injury and assesses the coma patient’s progress toward recovery.

But since the brain is in a state that is similar to sleep does it unconsciously respond to stimulations? There should be a study in which doctors use MRI to scan the brain to look at the different levels of response a brain has while in a coma. There should be some activity in the brain while in a coma, even if the person is unable to respond to outside stimulus. As long as a person is alive the brain should still have activity occurring within it. MRI’s can be taken of a person who is in a coma to show how much or how little brain activity they have, and if there is some part of the brain that responds to stimulus while unconscious.

It is imperative for patients to be absolutely still when having an MRI. Since people who are in a coma are not prone to movement it would not be hard to study their brains. There should be scans for coma patients whose families are willing to let them participate in the study. The patients should be in the MRI machines and have different types of stimuli administered to them. Since the brains of patients in a coma are not fully asleep, but just merely in a deep state of unconsciousness. The different types of stimuli that could be administered to the patients in a coma could be the voices of a family member of significant person in their life. The sound of something that could cause fear in a person, such as a scream, or sudden loud noise could be a stimulus. Another stimulus could be causing pain to a sensitive area of the body. The pain of course would not be intolerable, but jus enough to cause a reaction to the nerves of a normal person. Like the pricking of a finger or pinching of a foot. All of these stimuli to a person should cause the brain to respond in some kind of way.

There have also been studies done on the brain activity of people sleeping. Many people show brain activity in the rapid eye movement stages of sleep, also known as REM sleep. I believe that if there can be brain activity in the deepest parts of sleep then, there can also be brain activity in some and maybe even the smallest parts of the brain during a coma.
In the experiment that I am thinking of the MRI scans of the brain should be able to reveal to doctors what goes on exactly in the brain of a patient in a coma and how well it is functioning at different levels of consciousness. Maybe if there is a way to treat comas from within the brain then there could be a prevention of coma patients going into a vegetative state. A coma is diagnosed as an irreversible sleep, but with the way things are being discovered and inventions being made there might one day be a medicine or treatment to make coma patients recover faster.

I do not know why I have such an interest in the brain in a coma, but I think the brain is the most interesting thing in the human body. The brain is the most powerful and mind boggling thing. It is capable of giving people the ideas of inventing machines like MRI’s that can look inside of another human beings and view their brain. Humans are the most intelligent beings on the planet so their brains in my opinion are always functioning, until death of course. Since a patient in a coma is not dead there is always going to be some brain activity. Maybe we have not had the right person to invent the right machine to specifically see what happens when the brain is at maybe one of its weakest points.