Coma, from the Greek word koma, meaning deep sleep, is a state of extreme unresponsiveness, in which an individual exhibits no voluntary movement or behavior. Furthermore, in a deep coma, even painful stimuli (actions which, when performed on a healthy...

A coma is a deep state of unconsciousness, characterized by an inability to respond to stimuli. There are grades or levels of coma corresponding to an afflicted individual's ability to respond to stimuli. A complete or irreversible coma is usually...

A state of deep and persistent unconsciousness; it is explicitly not a form of deep SLEEP but something pathological. Sleep, especially REM SLEEP, involves significant and widespread neural activity; coma does not. Coma is also discriminated from...

A state of deep unconsciousness in which a sufferer is incapable of exhibiting a voluntary response to external stimulation. The condition is not necessarily irreversible although medical understanding and treatment of the condition is often not...

In medicine, a coma (from the Greek κῶμα koma, meaning deep sleep) is a profound state of unconsciousness. A comatose patient cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to pain or light, does not have sleep-wake cycles, and does not take...

In Alex Garland's shadowland, novels are one sentence long THE COMA By Alex Garland Riverhead, 200 pp. $19.95 LIVING IN OBLIVION Chief among its insinuating pleasures, Alex Garland's spectral new novella drains the element of surprise from the most primitive of...

Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland (Harper Collins Canada, 1998, $18.95). Douglas Coupland has been called a prophet of his generation. He draws large audiences from the under-40-year-old crowd, who hear in his writing a cry that resonates with their hearts....

A woman who fell into a coma after a heart attack more than six years ago awoke this week for three days and spoke with her family and a television station before slipping back into what her doctor called a minimally conscious state."I'm fine," Christa...

A railway worker who emerged from a 19-year coma woke to a radically altered Poland and thinks "the world is prettier now" than it was under communism, his wife said Sunday.Gertruda Grzebska, 63, said that for years she fed her husband Jan carefully with a...