Familiar Voices and Stories May Speed Coma Recovery

It turns out that familiar voices may just help speed up coma recovery. Scientists have found that the voices of loved ones telling a patient familiar stories stored in his long-term memory can help awaken the unconscious brain and speed recovery.

"We believe hearing those stories in parents' and siblings' voices exercises the circuits in the brian responsible for long-term memories," said Theresa Pape, lead author of the new study, in a news release. "That stimulation helped trigger the first glimmer of awareness."

A coma is an unconscious condition in which the patient can't open his eyes. Patients usually progress from a coma to either a minimally conscious or vegetative state, and these states can last a few weeks, months or years.

Godfrey Catanus was one such comatose patient. The former California youth minister had been in a coma for three months. That's when his wife, Corinth, signed him up for treatment.

During the course of the study, Corinth spoke to Godfrey and told him old stories. The resrearchers found that when he heard Corinth calling his name out loud and reciting stories while he was in an MRI, his brain showed increased neural activity. In addition, the researchers found that after six weeks of listening to recorded stories, the patient showed more responsiveness to other voices telling stories.

"This indicates the patient's ability to process and understand what they're hearing is much better," said Pape. "At baseline they didn't pay attention to that non-familiar voice. But now they are processing what that person is saying."

The findings reveal that voices and stories could potentially be used to help patients in a coma. This could be huge for developing therapies and could be the major difference in patient recovery.

The findings are published in the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair.

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