Can patients in coma following traumatic head injury learn simple tasks?
Initial observations that patients in coma showed a variety of responses when a cloth was placed over their faces generated a study investigating whether these patients could learn to remove the cloth. A method of backward chaining was used to teach the patients. Three experiments are reported. In the first study, five patients learned to remove the cloth while still in coma. In the second study, patients with a much lower Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score underwent the same procedure and all three removed the cloth while still in coma.
