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“We were very happy when we saw him reacting,” says of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Bron, leader of the team that has “woken” a man from a vegetative state. “This patient is like our baby. We are very attached to him. He’ll always remain in our hearts, because he’s our first patient.”

and her colleagues chose the 35-year-old man to be the first to trial vagus nerve stimulation because his condition had not improved for 15 years.

They reasoned that any improvements in his behaviour would be down to the stimulation and not simply chance fluctuations.

Before the stimulation started, the man was unresponsive, and his eyes were shut for most of the day. If open, they would stare into empty space, says Sirigu. “You had the feeling he was not looking at you.”

That changed once her team began stimulating his vagus nerve. Almost immediately, he began opening his eyes more often. About a month after stimulation began, his behavioural improvements started stabilising.

“His eyes were moving around as if he wanted to follow me,” says Sirigu. He then began to respond to instructions to turn his gaze from one side of the bed to another. When a clinician asked him to smile, he’d react by raising his left cheek.

Emotional reaction

When the team played some of his favourite music by French singer Jean-Jacques Goldman, the man had tears in his eyes. Sirigu says vagus nerve stimulation activates the neuroendocrinal system, which can explain the tears. But it happened at the same time as he listened to his preferred music, says Sirigu. “What can we say? We can conclude that there was an emotional reaction.”

Sirigu also believes that she startled her patient when she suddenly brought her face close to his. “His eyes were wide open,” she says, suggesting that he was aware of a threat to his personal space.

The man’s mother reported that he would stay awake for longer after the stimulation started. He seemed to be paying attention when his therapist read him a book, because his “eyes were open and oriented”, says Sirigu.

“I’m very thankful to this patient, and thankful to the family, to the mother,” she adds. “It was not easy to have surgery, without knowing what the result would have been. It was a very bold decision for the family.”

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