Even though comatose people can be conscious of what is happening around them, they are not always able to express it with their body. Dr Marek Binder from the Institute of Psychology at the Jagiellonian University wants to improve the methods of diagnosing the condition of such patients and study how their brains function.

The researcher is working on a modern and effective procedure which, thanks to the use of EEG method, will allow doctors to precisely diagnose the state of comatose patients. The method will also make it possible to assess whether the patient's condition has changed over time. 

EEG (Electroencephalography) was introduced as early as the 19th century. This cheap and easily available method is increasingly used for diagnosing comatose patients. It consists in placing small electrodes, which record the electrical activity of the brain, on the patient's head. The method allows doctors and researchers to learn whether the person is aware of what is going on around him or her, e.g. by hearing sounds, feeling physical stimuli or trying to make moves, even if the person's body remains motionless.

Dr Binder explains that EEG is rarely used to examine comatose patients in Poland. This is unfortunate since it may prove very useful in breaking the barrier between the patients' minds and the outside world and revealing how the damaged brains work.

The scientist points out that coma is a colloquial term used to describe many different conditions, including the vegetative state, the minimally conscious state, and the locked-in syndrome. "It is easily to confuse them, judging only by the patients' reactions. The research conducted in the UK and Belgium indicated that 40 percent of patients whose state was described as vegetative were indeed minimally conscious, which means that they were aware of what was happening around them," says Dr Binder.

The JU researcher stresses that it is very important for the patients' families to know that their relatives can hear and understand them. It is also vital to know how the patients' condition changes over time.

In his EEG-based research, Dr Binder wants to combine two approaches: the ‘active' approach, based on examining the way in which the patient's brain responds to commands (even though the patient may be unable to fulfil them), and the ‘passive' approach, in which the patient's brain is stimulated and the neural activity is monitored in order to determine the state of connections within the brain.

The JU scientist admits that it is not always possible to determine whether the patient is conscious during the examination. The analysis of the recorded signals can take time. But if comatose patients are able to consciously modulate the work of their brains, EEG may become a means of communication with these people. The efforts to develop a convenient and effective brain-computer interface involving EEG are already underway both in Poland and abroad.

Dr Binder's research is carried out as part of OPUS programme of the National Science Centre. Its cost amounts to 650 thousand PLN.