Claassen J, et al. - Through a prospective, consecutive series of patients (n=104) in a single intensive care unit who had an acute brain injury due to various reasons and who were unresponsive to spoken commands, experts intended to detect brain activation in unresponsive patients with an acute brain injury in order to determine the prevalence and prognostic ability of a dissociation between commanded motor behavior and brain activation in the first few days post-brain injury. At a median of 4 days post-injury, 16 out of 104 unresponsive patients had brain activation discovered by electroencephalography (EEG). An improvement was observed in 8 out of these 16 patients and in 23 of 88 patients without brain activation in such a way that they were able to obey commands prior to discharge. Seven of 16 participants and 12 of 84 patients with and without brain activation, respectively, had a Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended level of 4 or greater, indicating the ability for independent functioning for 8 hours after 12 months. Hence, in 15% of a consecutive series of patients with acute brain injury, disengagement between the absence of behavioral responses to motor commands and the proof of brain activation in response to these commands in EEG recordings was seen.