Question: What do you do whilst in a coma? How do you get in a coma? Why can we hear in one but not move?

Miranda Bane answered on 11 Nov 2016:

Hi Amy,
Thats a really interesting question. I don’t know lots about it but I can tell you what I do know.
You can go into a coma as a result of a big shock to your body, maybe because of an accident. Or a doctor can put you into a coma (this is called an induced coma) in order to protect your body after an accident.
When you are in a coma you body is functioning at a very basic level. This might give your body a chance to heal something that is broken and then you wake up. Sometimes it doesn’t work and some people never come out of a coma.
I dont know if you can tell whats going on around you when you are in a coma and it is difficult for us to find out because people in a coma cant tell us and might not remember when they wake up.
There are some studies where they put people in a coma in a brain scanning machine and asked a friend to talk to them. The scientist saw that parts of the brain lit up when the friend was speaking, but we have to be careful about how we interpret this because we don’t fully understand whats going on.