Importance, limits and caveats of the use of "disorders of consciousness" to theorize consciousness.

ABSTRACT: The clinical and fundamental exploration of patients suffering from disorders of consciousness (DoC) is commonly used by researchers both to test some of their key theoretical predictions and to serve as a unique source of empirical knowledge about possible dissociations between consciousness and cognitive and/or neural processes. For instance, the existence of states of vigilance free of any self-reportable subjective experience [e.g. "vegetative state (VS)" and "complex partial epileptic seizure"] originated from DoC and acted as a cornerstone for all theories by dissociating two concepts that were commonly equated and confused: vigilance and conscious state. In the present article, we first expose briefly the major achievements in the exploration and understanding of DoC. We then propos

SUBMITTER: Hermann B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8966966 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature