Detection of Brain Activation in Unresponsive Patients with Acute Brain Injury.

Background: Brain activation in response to spoken motor commands can be detected by electroencephalography (EEG) in clinically unresponsive patients. The prevalence and prognostic importance of a dissociation between commanded motor behavior and brain activation in the first few days after brain injury are not well understood.

Methods: We studied a prospective, consecutive series of patients in a single intensive care unit who had acute brain injury from a variety of causes and who were unresponsive to spoken commands, including some patients with the ability to localize painful stimuli or to fixate on or track visual stimuli.

Social opportunity and ethanol drinking in rats.

Two experiments were designed to evaluate the effects of pairings of ethanol sipper conditioned stimulus (CS) with social opportunity unconditioned stimulus (US) on ethanol sipper CS-directed drinking in rats. In both experiments, rats were deprived of neither food nor water, and initiation of drinking of unsweetened 3% ethanol was evaluated, as were the effects of increasing the concentration of unsweetened ethanol (3-10%) across sessions. In Experiment 1, Group Paired (n=8) received 35 trials per session wherein the ethanol sipper CS was presented for 10 s immediately prior to 15 s of social opportunity US.

Effects of ethanol sipper and social opportunity on ethanol drinking in rats.

Aims: The present study evaluates the effects of pairing ethanol sipper conditioned stimulus (CS) with social opportunity unconditioned stimulus (US) on CS-directed ethanol drinking in rats. Subjects were Long-Evans male rats (n = 32) deprived of neither food nor water, and the concentration of unsweetened ethanol (3 to 16%) in the sipper CS was increased across sessions.

Methods: Group Paired/Ethanol (n = 12) received the ethanol sipper CS for 10 s immediately prior to 15 s of social opportunity US.