hey there!  welcome to the new episode of Curiosity! A series in which we will answer some of the questions that makes us all curious.   

The word Coma is sometimes used as a joke to describe the person sleeping deeply, or the person who are not paying attention. What exactly comes in your mind whenever you hear about someone being in coma?. Well, Most of the people would say , its the long state of sleep, But in reality , coma is a very very serious condition and has nothing to do with sleep. So , what exactly is coma and what happens during one. Let's find out.

What Exactly is Coma?

The word "coma" is a Greek word meaning state of sleep. But that's not exactly the case. It usually means state of  deep unconsciousness caused due to some injury or the blood flow is cut off because of an accident. The conscious action of the brain is highly impaired. The person is still alive . but the brain is at very low level of consciousness and will not respond to any of the stimuli. 

What Causes Coma?

There are 4 lobes in the brain. Namely, Frontal lobe, Temporal lobe, Parietal Lobe and occipital lobe. All these lobes have their own functions. The frontal lobe is for thinking and defining the personality of the person. The temperol lobe is for memory and understanding. Parietal lobe helps in perception and making sense of the world and also helps in understand the words and finally occipital lobe is used for vision. Also there are some other major parts like Cerebellum controlling your movement and brain stem controlling major functions of the body like breathing and heart beat. 

Fig : Lobes of Brain (Credits)

Whenever there's a major accident causing a head injury, the first thing to happen is the brain will bleed and get swollen. Since the brain swells, the Cerebro Spinal Fluid (CSF) pushes up against the skull and against the brain stem.

If this reaches to a limit, then it starts damaging RAS (reticular activating system). Its is basically the switch that makes you aware of your surrounding.  When this RAS is damages the person becomes totally unaware and goes into a coma.

Other causes might include , seizures, infections involving brain cells, lack of oxygen for very long, overdose of a drug, or major chemical imbalance due to serious illness. There are different types of coma, depending on the different regions of brain affected.  This explains why some patients can twitch, and some can't even breath on their own. 

So, What a person experiences during Coma?

Some patients who woke up from Coma actually described , whats it's like to be in Coma. Well , we now know, there is activity of the brain is at base level. But can they hear anything spoken by people around them?. Well, according to the recovered patients, YES!, they shared their experience saying, they could hear every person talking every person in the room , but they were not able to make sense out of it. Every things happening in the real world, they are basically aware of to some levels. They explained , they could hear everything, and had a conversation but only in their brain.

According to a study done on many coma patients, the brain scans showed little activity to the people talking around them but the scans showed different parts of brain active while their names were called.

The paper published in 2015 , explained comatose patient who heard the voices  family members daily, for several weeks recovered significantly faster and had improved recovery.

Unfortunately, there is no exact treatment for coma. Some wake up and some doesn't. 

What do they feel after waking up?

Usually, coma only lasts for few weeks, or months, however sometimes it can last for years. Most of the people do recover from coma and go back to their normal life. While the person is coming out of coma, they might be very confused and slowly respond to the stimuli. Other people might need to learn basics things like tying their shoe laces, eating with a spoon, walking after waking up. 

That's it for this Episode guys, Hope you enjoyed it. If you did, Upvote and comment your thoughts below. Thank you

Stay Curious.

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Last Five Episodes:

 Curiosity | Why do some people Sleep Walk?

 Curiosity | What is the possibility of being hit by an Asteroid?

Curiosity #36 | Can Freezing our body make us Immortal? 

Curiosity #35 | What Would happen If all the humans suddenly disappeared overnight? 

Curiosity #34 How Can We Survive on Mars?