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I'm Nate.

And I'm Callie. If you're dropping in for the first time,

welcome to curiosity where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind.

If you're a loyal listener, welcome back. Today you'll learn about hidden consciousness in Comatose patients, the eerie secret glowing

language of frogs, and the mysterious blinking of race car drivers.

Without further ado, let's satisfy some curiosity.

Researchers at Columbia University think they have found the source of hidden consciousness

and patients otherwise in a comatose state.

I gotta say that sounds extremely sci-fi like hidden consciousness what is that all

right so we did a story a while back on locked-in syndrome do you remember that?

Sure if memory serves where patients basically lose the ability to move anything except you know their eyes in most cases

They are conscious but they can't really respond to anything they're just locked in. Is that right?

That's right.

So in this case, the patients are essentially comatose.

To find any signs of brain activity you really have to look.

But check this out, by some estimates,

some 15 to 25% of patients in a comatose state as a result of traumatic brain injuries or brain hemorrhaging or even a cardiac arrest have something called cognitive motor dissociation or hitting consciousness.

Okay, so I'm guessing that means that they are still lucid in a sense.

Like maybe they're able to hear people talking or sense the world around them but they can't respond?

It's something like that. Over the past decade or so it's become clear that more and more of

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