{"id":164972,"date":"2023-06-01T23:29:24","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T04:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/are-the-olfactory-responses-of-patients-in-a-coma-or-vegetative-state-signs-of-consciousness"},"modified":"2023-06-01T23:29:24","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T04:29:24","slug":"are-the-olfactory-responses-of-patients-in-a-coma-or-vegetative-state-signs-of-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/are-the-olfactory-responses-of-patients-in-a-coma-or-vegetative-state-signs-of-consciousness","title":{"rendered":"Are the olfactory responses of patients in a coma or vegetative state signs of consciousness?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/are-the-olfactory-responses-of-patients-in-a-coma-or-vegetative-state-signs-of-consciousness3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Severe brain injuries or head traumas in humans can lead to various stages of so-called disorders of consciousness (DoC). These are states in which consciousness is either partly or entirely absent, such as a coma; unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, also known as a vegetative state; and minimally conscious state.<\/p>\n<p>Accurately evaluating <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/patients\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">patients<\/a> who have lost consciousness is of crucial importance, as it allows doctors to determine what treatments to administer and how to facilitate the re-emergence of consciousness. Typically, to clinically evaluate consciousness, doctors observe the behavior of patients in response to <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/sensory+stimuli\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">sensory stimuli<\/a>, such as sounds or images.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, while patients in a <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/vegetative+state\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">vegetative state<\/a> are awake but continue to be unresponsive to <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/external+stimuli\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">external stimuli<\/a>, patients with MCS exhibit some behaviors that indicate that they are conscious. So far, most methods to assess the consciousness level of patients rely on sounds or <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/visual+stimuli\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">visual stimuli<\/a>, yet olfactory stimuli could potentially prove useful too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Severe brain injuries or head traumas in humans can lead to various stages of so-called disorders of consciousness (DoC). These are states in which consciousness is either partly or entirely absent, such as a coma; unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, also known as a vegetative state; and minimally conscious state. Accurately evaluating patients who have lost consciousness [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}