Basic discriminative and semantic processing in patients in the vegetative and minimally conscious state.

Patients who survive injuries to the brain following accidents or diseases often acquire a disorder of consciousness (DOC). Assessment of the state of consciousness in these patients is difficult since they are usually incapable of reproducible motor movements. The application of event-related potentials (ERP) recorded via EEG constitutes one promising approach to complement the assessment of cognitive functions in DOC patients.