we intend to show, for the first time, that fNIRS can be used to reliably communicate with disorders of consciousness patients. There are many practical challenges to resolve (which are common to both fNIRS and EEG) such as involuntary movements by the patient, variability in consciousness itself, physical distortion in the head (such as from trauma) and a person's limited ability to perform repetitive mental tasks.

We will focus on patients who have already demonstrated by fMRI that they can perform motor imagery activation and plan to study up to 20 such patients over the course of a year.