My Lab Uses Ultrasound to Stimulate Unconscious Patients

A few years ago, at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, I escaped the noisy midday hustle and bustle, ducking into a room in the Intensive Care Unit. It was completely quiet, save the subtle hum of equipment. A patient, who I will call Christopher, was lying on a bed in the room. He had not shown behavioral signs of consciousness since he experienced a severe brain injury in a car accident two weeks prior. He was believed to be comatose, and thus fully unconscious. But that was left to me to determine through behavioral assessment. 

Still a graduate student, I had begun co-conducting the first clinical trial using ultrasound to treat severe brain damage in patients with a “disorder of consciousness,” like coma or the vegetative state. People who are in a coma or vegetative state are thought to have no internal experience, like seeing or hearing. On the other