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Patients with severe brain injury who are in a minimally conscious state demonstrate what these authors call "unequivocal, but intermittent, behavioral evidence of awareness of self or their environment." It is difficult to use behavioral cues for ascertaining what these individuals understand or are processing. These researchers used functional MRI to investigate cortical responses to passive listening and sensory stimulation in two minimally conscious men and seven healthy controls. One patient had had a spontaneous intracranial hemorrhage in the left temporoparietal region with brainstem compression; regional cerebral metabolic rate (CMR), measured by PET, was 38.6% of normal rates. The other patient had blunt head trauma to the right fr…