Family Stories May Help Coma Patients Recover

THURSDAY, Jan. 22, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Hearing their loved ones tell familiar stories can help brain injury patients in a coma regain consciousness faster and have a better recovery, a new study suggests.

The study included 15 male and female brain injury patients, average age 35, who were in a vegetative or minimally conscious state. Their brain injuries were caused by car or motorcycle crashes, bomb blasts or assaults.

Beginning an average of 70 days after they suffered their brain injury, the patients were played recordings of their family members telling familiar stories that were stored in the patients' long-term memories.

The recordings were played over headphones four times a day for six weeks, according to the study published Jan. 22 in the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair.

"We believe hearing those stories in parents' and siblings' voices exercises the circuits in the brain responsible for long-term memories," study author Theresa Pape, a neuroscientist in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Northwestern University's School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a university news release.

"That stimulation helped trigger the first glimmer of awareness," she added.

This increased awareness can help coma patients wake more easily, be more aware of their surroundings and start to respond to conversations and directions, Pape noted.

"After the study treatment, I could tap them on the shoulder, and they would look at me. Before the treatment, they wouldn't do that," she said.

The patients were able to actively participate in physical, speech and occupational therapy, all of which are crucial in their recovery, Pape said.

This type of story therapy also helps patients' families, the study authors noted.

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Family Stories May Help Coma Patients Recover