"Based on their earlier work, the team expected the volunteers’ brain activity to stabilise and stay that way for hundreds of milliseconds when they reported having seen the drawing, but become highly variable otherwise. ‘This was borne out really, really nicely in the data,’ says Schurger.
“The team then tested their technique in 116 people with disorders of consciousness. The patients, who were either minimally conscious, in a vegetative state or had just recovered from coma, were played a tone while their brain activity was recorded. The ability of their brains to converge on a stable state correlated with their clinical diagnosis: the more conscious the patient, the greater the stability. ‘The stability of their brain’s response to an auditory beep is an indicator of their state of consciousness,’ says Schurger.”
“Sparks of consciousness mapped in most detail yet”