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How Comas Work · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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  Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com. This episode is sponsored
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  Speaker 1: piece of the Internet at go daddy dot com. Hello
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  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, I'm Chuck. The
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  Speaker 1: red light is on. We have one of those now
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  Speaker 1: we need one? Now, Yeah, we totally do. It's usually
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  Speaker 1: just a you know, we hear our producer Jerry President
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  Speaker 1: button right, and then we know to go. You just
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  Speaker 1: start talking like talking monkeys. It's like a German the
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  Speaker 1: German train system. It's very efficient. Yes, it is Chuck, Chuck.
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  Speaker 1: As you know, it's been in all together rotten day
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  Speaker 1: so far, right, Yeah, hasn't been our best And what
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  Speaker 1: is it like three in the afternoon? Yeah, yes, okay,
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  Speaker 1: so um, luckily it'll be over soon enough. And it's Friday. Um,
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  Speaker 1: I am even worse than I was before, because rather
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  Speaker 1: than getting my usual fresca, I got a diet cherry
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  Speaker 1: coke by accident. And you know, all respect to the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Coke Cold company, they've done really well for themselves, but
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  Speaker 1: diet cherry coke is atrocious. I like that you're suffering
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  Speaker 1: through it anyway rather than I opened it. You know,
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  Speaker 1: I gotta I've gotta make do. But um, honorable. You know,
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  Speaker 1: as bad as our day has been, right, yeah, I
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  Speaker 1: can tell you somebody whose day was even Worse's how's
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  Speaker 1: that first segue? I actually just set up the setup
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  Speaker 1: for the podcast. So what do you think you're blowing
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  Speaker 1: my mind? Um? There's this woman named Patricia white Bull
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  Speaker 1: and she was a co cheaty Indian from outside of Albuquerque,
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  Speaker 1: New Mexico. And back when she was a lovely young
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  Speaker 1: twenty eight, she was giving birth to her fourth child,
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  Speaker 1: son named Mark, and uh, she was giving birth via
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  Speaker 1: C section, and there are complications in the surgery and uh,
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  Speaker 1: Mrs white Bull uh developed a blood clot in her
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  Speaker 1: lung and it actually cut off oxygen to her brain
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  Speaker 1: and she laughs into a coma. Okay, so comas actually happened.
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  Speaker 1: They can happen fairly frequently. They're not uncommon, but Mrs
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  Speaker 1: white Bull's type of coma actually very rare. She was
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  Speaker 1: in a coma for sixteen years, which is that's really
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  Speaker 1: that's a long time to be in a coma. So, um,
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  Speaker 1: there are other people out there like her. Um, have
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  Speaker 1: you heard of Sunny von Buelow reversal of fortune? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so she's been in a coma for nineteen years, uh huh.
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  Speaker 1: And a couple of years back, actually she was moved
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  Speaker 1: from this very very expensive um care facility to a
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  Speaker 1: slightly less expensive when it was estimated that her family
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  Speaker 1: is spending about half a million dollars on her care,
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  Speaker 1: as well as hairstylists and ran chairs and stuff like that,
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  Speaker 1: finally had to say we gotta move you. Mall Um.
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  Speaker 1: Was she in the coma from the attempted murder? Yes? Really,
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  Speaker 1: allegedly by her husband, Claus von Bull, who recently passed away. Correct, Actually, um,
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  Speaker 1: it was she who passed away. Okay, she did, um,
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  Speaker 1: And this is actually kind of common. I'm not sure
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  Speaker 1: how she passed away, but people in comas sometimes passed
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  Speaker 1: away from pneumonia or something like that. It's their their
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  Speaker 1: bodies not functioning very well, so they can succumb to
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  Speaker 1: things like that. Well, apologies for not being up on
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  Speaker 1: my von Buelow history. Hey, same here, Pale. It's okay.
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  Speaker 1: Things move pretty fast in this crazy world of ours.
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  Speaker 1: So back to Mrs white Bowl. Um, while Mrs von
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  Speaker 1: Bulow never woke up, Mrs white Bull actually did after
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  Speaker 1: sixteen years. This is amazing. This is exceedingly rare, rareer
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  Speaker 1: than a sixteen plus your coma is waking up from
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  Speaker 1: a sixteen plus your comma. Basically, Um, she woke up
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  Speaker 1: one day while her one of her caregivers was adjusting
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  Speaker 1: the sheets on her bed, and she lifted her head
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  Speaker 1: and shouted, don't do that, and scared. I imagine the
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  Speaker 1: daylights out of this woman. Yeah. Uh and uh. After that,
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  Speaker 1: she was writing notes to her family. She called her
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  Speaker 1: mother to say, marry Christmas has happened in December. Um,
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  Speaker 1: And within like a month she was at a mall.
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  Speaker 1: She wanted to see, you know, how the world had changed.
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  Speaker 1: So she went to them all. She went to them all.
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  Speaker 1: It's actually a pretty good place to start, right because
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  Speaker 1: I mean back when she fell into a coma, Reagan
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  Speaker 1: had just started his second term right right. Um there,
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  Speaker 1: just I think about how much the world changed between
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  Speaker 1: kidding and she woke up just in time to get
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  Speaker 1: nervous for Y two k Yeah you know good? Yeah? Wow,
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  Speaker 1: that's awesome, isn't that? It's kind of an uplifting story.
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  Speaker 1: We could end it right here and I would be happy.
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  Speaker 1: Probably I would too, actually, but we're not. Yeah, so
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  Speaker 1: you want to talk about combas that I think I
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  Speaker 1: take it from that solicitation. Yes, all right, well chuck,
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  Speaker 1: let me start, because I haven't spoken enough so far.
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  Speaker 1: I agree. I you're just gonna kick it off with
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  Speaker 1: Coma comes from the Greek word coma appropriately enough, with
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  Speaker 1: a with a K. That's the big distinction. And that
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  Speaker 1: word is to sleep in the Greek dialect um. And
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  Speaker 1: that's actually pretty misleading, isn't it. It is because when
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  Speaker 1: you're sleep, you can wake up, and if you're in
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  Speaker 1: a coma, you're not waking up. You don't respond to
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  Speaker 1: stimuli like you know, site or motor function stuff like that. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so you can sit there and shot all day at
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  Speaker 1: a comma patient. They're not waking up, right. Um. They
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  Speaker 1: also don't respond respond to pain stimuli. Um. There there's
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  Speaker 1: they're just basically out right, but the brain functions part
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  Speaker 1: of it does, right, Okay, So, um, we should probably
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  Speaker 1: talk about the brain. To understand that coma, you kind
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  Speaker 1: of have to have a minor understanding of the brain, right,
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  Speaker 1: major understanding, major understanding. Exactly. Um. So we've got basically
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  Speaker 1: three parts, yes, that that work to make us these
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  Speaker 1: you know, talking monkeys that we are. Right. Um, You've
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  Speaker 1: got the cerebrum cerebellum in the brains to him, uh,
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  Speaker 1: and they communicate with one another, So you're cerebrum. That's
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  Speaker 1: your higher brain. Yeah, that's controls things like emotion, memory, intelligence, personality, context. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's what most people think of when they think of
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  Speaker 1: the brain. All that good stuff is in there, and
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  Speaker 1: it's the largest part. Two. And then you've got the cerebellum,
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  Speaker 1: which is in charge of balance movements, also very important.
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  Speaker 1: And then the most ancient part of the brain, um
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  Speaker 1: evolutionarily speaking, is the brain stem. Right, this is like
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  Speaker 1: the basic part of the brain that controls like, um, breathing,
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  Speaker 1: blood pressure, bowel movements. Actually, yeah exactly. So, Um, you
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  Speaker 1: put all these together and you've got us intelligent, reasoning,
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  Speaker 1: pooping humans, wrapping skull around it and some skin and
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  Speaker 1: you've got a human exactly. Um. And all these things
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  Speaker 1: have to kind of communicate with one another, and they
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  Speaker 1: do so through the thalamus um and they send chemical
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  Speaker 1: signals to one another. UM that makes your lungs um
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  Speaker 1: inflate and deflate and makes you think this person is
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  Speaker 1: making fun of me, or they're after me or something. Um.
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  Speaker 1: There there's all this stuff combined, as you said, makes
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  Speaker 1: us this way. If they stopped talking to one another,
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  Speaker 1: you got yourself an altered state of consciousness exactly. And
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  Speaker 1: there's quite a few of those. Yeah, you want to
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  Speaker 1: talk about some of the other altered states. Uh, well, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: there's a vegetative state that a lot of people, um
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  Speaker 1: get confused with comma. It's not exactly the same thing, uh.
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  Speaker 1: And a vegislative state is actually a type of coma um,
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  Speaker 1: but you're generally awake but unresponsive, so your eyes can
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  Speaker 1: be open, but you're still unresponsive. It is generally confused
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  Speaker 1: with with coma because it usually comes after a coma.
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  Speaker 1: Correct um. These people like Mrs white Bowl and Mrs
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  Speaker 1: von Buelow, who are in comas for dozens of years
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  Speaker 1: or tens of years, um, we're uh in a vegetative
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  Speaker 1: state after X amount of time. So if you're in
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  Speaker 1: a coma and you go into a vegetative state, you're
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  Speaker 1: probably in a lot of trouble. You're probably not going
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  Speaker 1: to come out of it. Um. You you some part
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  Speaker 1: of your brain stem responds to stimuli, stimuli like maybe
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  Speaker 1: a sound. So all of a sudden, your eyes um,
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  Speaker 1: which are no longer coordinated, so they're kind of lolling around,
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  Speaker 1: but both in the same direction towards the sound, but
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  Speaker 1: there's no awareness of it. You're not you're not using
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  Speaker 1: any of your higher brain function to figure out what
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  Speaker 1: the sound is. It's just like a basic response. Right.
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  Speaker 1: Your eyes can move, I believe that they could be
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  Speaker 1: like yawning, even you can yawn, that kind of thing, blinking.
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  Speaker 1: And the one real hallmark of a vegetative state is
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  Speaker 1: people in it have sleep cycles. So so you know,
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  Speaker 1: during the day they're diurnal. Still during the day they
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  Speaker 1: will you know, blink or their eyes a lull about
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  Speaker 1: in their head or there, they'll turn their their head
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  Speaker 1: towards something, um. And then at night they're not doing that,
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  Speaker 1: they're sleeping. In a coma, you're just you just appear
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  Speaker 1: to be sleeping the whole time. So that's one. There's
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  Speaker 1: another one that is one of my particular favorite altered
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  Speaker 1: states of conscious stupor that actually scared me. Apparently, if
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  Speaker 1: you are whacked out of your skull on drugs and
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  Speaker 1: you're in a stupor, you're like one or two steps
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  Speaker 1: away from Coma's host. It's all the same process is
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  Speaker 1: going on. It's just I guess to a slightly different degree.
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  Speaker 1: But that's alarming, you know, So watch out, buddy, I'm
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  Speaker 1: watching out. But I distracted. You know, I know which
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  Speaker 1: one you were going to talk about. You just like
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  Speaker 1: to say stupor um. The one I like the most
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  Speaker 1: is locked in syndrome. Yeah. I can't believe I just
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  Speaker 1: said that. The the one I liked the most, the
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  Speaker 1: one you find what's fascinating, Thank you, Chuck. Locked in
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  Speaker 1: syndrome UM is basically where you're, uh, you can move
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  Speaker 1: your higher brain is or you can't move. You're totally
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  Speaker 1: aware though your higher brain is functioning. You are literally
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  Speaker 1: locked into your body um and basically the only thing
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  Speaker 1: you can move are your eyes typically and uh, that's
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  Speaker 1: like Jean Dominique Bobie from the Diamond Bell in the Butterfly,
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  Speaker 1: which is a great movie. We were just talking with Jerry,
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  Speaker 1: our producer beforehand. We've both seen the film. It's really, really,
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  Speaker 1: really great. But you have not because you're too busy
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  Speaker 1: watching Magnet Pion. Yeah I have. I know enough about
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  Speaker 1: the story when it came out, you know, I listen
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  Speaker 1: to NPR and then talked about that like seven Days
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  Speaker 1: in a Row. I think it's really good. But the
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  Speaker 1: guy because he could move his eyes and he had
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  Speaker 1: a computer software system that he could type with it.
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  Speaker 1: But he he and he wrote a book in his
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  Speaker 1: in this locked in state. Yes, right, and um he
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  Speaker 1: typed every single letter of this book by looking at
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  Speaker 1: the by choosing like a keyboard, right or from from
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  Speaker 1: like a computer screen keyboard. I believe that's what happened.
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  Speaker 1: That's nuts. But I mean imagine that. Imagine being locked
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  Speaker 1: in and knowing exactly what was going on, and I'm
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  Speaker 1: very frustrating. Imagine it's very much like the Metallica video one,
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  Speaker 1: except that guy could move right, which was from the
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  Speaker 1: film Johnny got his gun. I think, thank you, Wow,
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  Speaker 1: very nice my fountain of film knowledge today. So those
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  Speaker 1: are a couple of other altered states of consciousness in
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  Speaker 1: case you're interested. If not, you should have fast forward
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  Speaker 1: it to to the last one minute and a half maybe two. Um,
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  Speaker 1: and we're back to coma again. Okay, so somebody falls
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  Speaker 1: into a coma. How how does this happen? What are
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  Speaker 1: some of the ways you can become coma tope? Well,
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  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of ways. Um. One way is from
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  Speaker 1: brain injury, obviously. UM, if you have severe head trauma,
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  Speaker 1: you can get an impact that actually makes your brain
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  Speaker 1: move within your skull. And uh, and now that if
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  Speaker 1: your brain actually hit your skull, that's what a concussion is, correct,
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  Speaker 1: I believe so. But something more severe than that can
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  Speaker 1: cause uh, nerve blood vessels and nerve fibers to swell up,
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  Speaker 1: and that can potentially cut off the flow of blood
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  Speaker 1: and therefore oxygen to the brain. And that's when you're
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  Speaker 1: in trouble. You want your skull to be stationary at
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  Speaker 1: all times, or you want your brain to be stationary
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: at all times in your skull. Yes, it's just not
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  Speaker 1: good when it slaps around in there. No, it's not. So.
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  Speaker 1: You can also become comatast if you have diabetes, right, diabetes,
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  Speaker 1: certain diseases like meningitis can make it happen. Drug overdose
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  Speaker 1: can make it happen. Yeah, although I believe you told
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  Speaker 1: me that they don't even know exactly how that happens.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know how it happens. I couldn't find out
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  Speaker 1: what leads to it. The way I took it was
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  Speaker 1: that there is a m It slows your response, um it.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe it slows the oxygen to your brain, or the
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: flow of oxygen your brain, or it just relaxes muscles
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  Speaker 1: that need to be working. I don't know. That's literally
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  Speaker 1: off the top of my head, right. I sense a
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  Speaker 1: neurosurgeon email in the near future to climbs up for us, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: because we want to. But yeah, there are there are
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  Speaker 1: plenty of ways that you can slip into a coma,
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  Speaker 1: And actually you can slip into a coma. You can
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  Speaker 1: go through stages of altered consciousness and then end up
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  Speaker 1: coma toast, which is the granddaddy worst one of all,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: although I don't know, lockdan is probably worse. But it
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  Speaker 1: can't happen gradually, that's a good point. Or it can
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  Speaker 1: happen very quickly, like you know, through a major concussion,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: through a car accident or something like that if you've
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  Speaker 1: slipped into a diabetic coma, that would happen gradually usually
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  Speaker 1: right exactly, you might get feverish and uh dizzy and lethargic,
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  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you're in a coma,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: which is frightening. It is do you have diabetes? Me? Neither?
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I might one day, though I think my father got
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: it later in his life. Is a genetic I don't know.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: I sense another letter from a personal type clear that
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: at this point we could just start asking questions we
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: read do do like a twenty minute reader mail segment.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: You just correcting ourselves every time. It's a good idea,
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  Speaker 1: all right, So what do you do if you're in
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: a coma? I mean, here, let me just say one
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: thing real quick. After researching comas, you know how when
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: you have a heart attack, your your heart actually isn't stopped.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: It's it's gone out of its rhythmic beat. So when
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: you are zapped, right when they when they hit you
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: with the paddles, what they're doing is actually stopping your
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: heart to give it a chance to restart. With a coma,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: it seems like the pattern of of um of discussion
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: between the different parts of your brain that make you
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  Speaker 1: conscious and aware. Um, they it's been interrupted, but we
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: don't know how to zap it back into place exactly.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: It's a good way to say it, but you know,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I mean you still have to care for these people, exactly.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: You can't just say, well, you know, we don't really
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: know how to do anything to make you better. There
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: are some ways drug overdose, Uh, if you keep if
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: you sustain someone's life processes, they can come out after
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the drug begins to wear off, or same with alcohol poison. Uh,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: diabetic coma that can be treated. Yeah, but once they
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: like from a major brain injury, you may be in
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: big trouble or stroke. Sure. I think the first thing
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  Speaker 1: that has to happen is a doctor has to determine
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: whether or not you're actually in a coma. That's the
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: first step. Yeah, how do they do that? Well, there's
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: a couple of um, a couple of scales they use
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: to determine your level of alertness. And one is from Glasgow.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: It's called the Glasgow Coma scale. Is that how it
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: said it? There's no accent associated with it. I'm not
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: gonna try my Scottish accent. And then there's the Rancho
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: los Amigos scale. No, I'm not going to do that either,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: all right, We're gonna remain respectful in this one. And
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: basically the doctors use these two scales and there's varying
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: test of responsiveness with your eyes, verbal responses, motor responses
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: to various stimuli and so um they do this to determine.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: They use both of these scales actually, uh to to
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: basically gauge how alert you are and whether or not
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: you're in fact in a comma. So is it like
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: they just clap loudly next to your ears and command
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: you to sit up or something like that, I would
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: say so. I mean they use um like do your
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: eyes open when someone speaks to you? Uh, do yours?
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Do your eyes open when there's pain involved? So there's
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: all kinds of little ways that they can check. And yeah,
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  Speaker 1: they I guess they want to determine whether you're in
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: a coma or whether you're just you know, resting your
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: eyes or playing possum because of what comes after that, right,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: And they while they assign your score an arrange from
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  Speaker 1: three to fifteen, three e being a very deep coma
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: and fifteen being uh less right now, right, Yeah, I'm
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: about fourteen. But yeah, alright, so we've established you're in
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: a coma. It's awful your three right, all right, so
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: you are just completely dead to the world, but you're
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: still alive amazingly right. That would be comatose and unresponsive
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: is the official classification of that's deep of a comma. Okay,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: so you're in there. Um, if you're in a car injury,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: what they're going to do. They're gonna tree ours, your symptoms,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: your problems. So if you're in a car record something
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: you have injuries from that, they're gonna, you know, control
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: the bleeding that kind of thing. They want to stabilize
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: everything else first not first, but you know once you're
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: once you're stable though, um, and you're still in a coma,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: they you can't care for yourself any longer. So they
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like they're going to poke around and
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: determine what the causes. Maybe they'll use in e g.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Electro and cephalography right or m r I or f
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: m r I, which is basically an m r I
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: for the brain, or CT scan which is computed tomography
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: right now. They they'll use all these things to basically
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: either look inside and e g actually is basically, um,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: kind of like cooking into your electrical system and checking out,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: you know what, how the impulses are doing right, and
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: they'll diagnose, you know, maybe what caused the coma, that
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. So once once you once you're stabilized
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: diagnosed in a coma, you know, you've you've been given
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: the scale rating, um, and you're in for the long haul. Clearly. Yeah,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: they're they're gonna basically use machines to care for you,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: like feeding tubes. Um. Oftentimes somebody in a prolonged coma
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: or vegetative state. Uh, they'll perform a tricky otomy so
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: they don't have to innovate you um because after a
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: while the innovation too. But imagine gets real, you know,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: uncomfortable that actually so much so that you you would
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: prefer a hole of the throat. Yeah, and you know,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: let me it's a little aside. One of my best friends,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: guy named Jen's Baty, in sixth grade, Uh, his mom
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: started choking h in a restaurant and actually had an
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: emergency trackeotomy with a stake knife and a pain performed
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: on her. Yeah, there was a doctor there who did it,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: and he just went he was breathing. Again. That's the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: worst case scenario right there. And so he used to
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: have this little scar and still I'm sure still does.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: But it was crazy. Guys. The only person I ever
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: knew who had an emergency trade. I thought that was
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: something just you know, you get on the er. Yeah,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: it happens, It happens. Uh. So back to comas, another
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: thing that that is often done is a physical therapy
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: just to keep the muscles moving. Um, they'll they'll, you know,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the nurses will move the patient to prevent bed swords
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and then move the muscles, flex the legs to keep
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: you know, atrophy from setting in. Or if you're uma therman,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: you can do a really focused you know, um regime
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: right within an eight hour period and you'll be walking again. Right. Yeah. So, um,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: how we need to bring this down a little bit,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: don't we? I think so? Yeah, because searching it, it's
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: when you really get a grasp on comas, in the
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: peculiar nature of them and just the fact that we
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: have no way to bring somebody out of a coma.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: It's kind of heartbreaking to think that their families out
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: there who would go to the hospital every day or
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: every week and yeah, and you hope because there's people
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: like Patricia White Bull who sit up all of a
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: sudden and there you have it. You know, somebody can
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: come out of a long comma. It's that's rough true.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I've got a study for you that might encourage you
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: a bit. I'd love to hear it, just from two
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: thousand six. It's from Dr Adrian Owen of Cambridge University
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: and neuroscientists, and he's trying to determine a consciousness meter
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: for people in comas and vegetative states. So what he
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: does is he hooks a normal, healthy person up to
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: uh an f m R I machine, which I know
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: you understand how that works right, Well, it basically it's
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: it it uses magnet magnetic imaging to see through the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: skull um and basically it's watching the brain. It is
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: watching the electrical activit being in the brain. So if
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: you know the the prefrontal cortex lights up when you
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: tell somebody to you know, um, and when somebody sees
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: a bunny, you'll know that the prefrontal cortex is involved
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: in and taking cuteness into context or something. Well, that's
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: I'm impressed. So he'll hook up a healthy person and
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: then someone in a come our vegetative state and asked
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: him to do something like, imagine playing a game of tennis.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: I believes what he is on this one woman, and
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: he found that, um, the brain activity was really similar
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: for both of these people, which led him to believe that, uh,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: there may be a lot more brain activity going on
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: and some of these different states of mind. Yeah, that
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: that pretty much flatly contradicts our understanding of vegetative states. True,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: but it also this was one one person. I believe
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: that it was successful in and I'm sure there's been
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: subsequent studies since. But he himself said that, you know,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: we need to keep studying this kind of thing before
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: we make any determinations. Yeah, yeah, we need to basically
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: figure out how to bring people out of comas. Right,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: but it does happen. You can come out of a coma. No,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: you totally can't. You can't bring someone out of a coma.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: But I think they said that who score a three
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: or four on the on the scale within the first
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours are likely to either die or remain
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: in the vegetative state, So that's no good. And but
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: on the other side, who score between eleven and fifteen
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: are likely to make a good recovery. So well it
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: makes sense. I mean, if you can, you know, shake
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: somebody's hand when they tell you to, right, you're probably
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: gonna make it. But apparently it's his first twenty four
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: hours are really telling. Yeah, I would imagine. So, so
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: that's that's comas. Huh. That's my understanding of Comma, the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: great medical mystery that still remains one day maybe I hope.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: So all right, chilling, uh, Chuck, do you want to
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: do listener mail? Yeah, let's do listener mail. And I'm
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: starting to separate listener mail into different categories good cream
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: from the rest of the crop, as exactly the men
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: from the boys, well, just more like a good way
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: to woman from the girls. Shut it. Um. So, first
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: of all, we've decided to change this one part to
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: stuff we should know. This is instead of corrections a
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: lot of times are not in actual correction, but something
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: a listener has added that we did not realize. And
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: there's stuff we should have known, stuff we should have known.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: We can call it that, but that that actually came
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: from Brian Smith of California suggested we call it that. Yeah,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: we're actively following our listeners commands at this point. So, Brian,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: we appreciate the title there, and we're gonna use that now.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: So something we did miss in the body armor episode.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: We talked about a lot of kinds of body armor,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: which was good, but we failed to mention one new,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: very awesome one called dragon skin armor. And apparently these
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: are a little small, overlapping ceramic disks, sort of like
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the medieval scale mail. And um, it's just a modern
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: version essentially, and it's more effective from repeated hits from
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: a bullet. So a lot quite a few people sent
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: this in. Michael Schivitz, retired naval officer or I don't
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: know about officer, retired U S. Navy, Reno Marino or
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Renee Marino from Brooklyn, and Devin Montess in California. And
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: I'm sure we missed a few others, but yeah, we
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: actually got a lot of mail about the dragon skills.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: And I say, I find it comforting to know that
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: we're advancing light years now, right, And I have one
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: more quick one, and this is uh apropos to our
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: topic today of commas, John mull Queen. It's a doctor
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. And John wrote in and said I thought
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: it would never happen. But I heard a mistake on
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know, uh exorcism. Apparently you said this
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: is not me. You said that someone with epilepsy. You
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: could throw somebody in an MRI machine and look at
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the parts of the brain and see that someone is epileptic.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: And John says that, actually you would not see epilepsy
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: in an MRI. I caesars are diagnosed with an E
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: E G machine, which is what we just spoke about,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: So we appreciate that correction. Yeah, thank you. Is he from?
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Is he from Farmington Framing hand? You know it's from
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Gardner mass Well x x o O to all of
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: our listeners who sent mail, and you two can send mail.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: You can send it to uh stuff podcast at how
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. I gotta tell you there's plenty
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: more information on comas in the great article on the
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: site called how comas work. Just type those three little
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: words into our handy search bar and of course how
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: It's ready, are you