Figure 1

Recovery after severe brain injury. According to the clinical definition, transition from coma to Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (UWS) is denoted by the eyes opening, which is interpreted as a sign of regained arousal. Reproducible evidence of recovered awareness is a hallmark of Minimally Conscious State (MCS), but is already assigned as soon as a patient can visually fixate (MCS−). A step further up, patients are termed MCS+ if they are sometimes able to communicate in some form with the environment.