In a study published in July 2007 in the American review, PNAS, researchers from the University of Liège’s Coma Science Group showed, thanks to functional magnetic resonance imaging, that the profile adopted by the spontaneous functioning of our brain a few seconds before stimulation, predicts the perception that we will have.

At the University of Liège's (ULg) Cyclotron Research Center (CRC), the Coma Science Group, led by Steven Laureys, head of research at the Belgian National Funds for Scientific Research (FNRS), is working intensely on the study of altered states of consciousness and consciousness itself. Its work has been the subject of numerous publications in the most prestigious reviews.

In July 2007, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS – United States) review opened its columns to a team from the Coma Science Group, led by Doctor Mélanie Boly, a candidate for the FNRS, and Steven Laureys. The article in question [1] referred to a discovery that shed a new and original light on consciousness, on the one hand, and on the perception of pain, on the other hand, in relation to the spontaneous activity of the brain. Because the brain never rests. For instance, no-one denies the simple fact that it controls breathing. However, we are dealing with a different type of problem here: it relates to the world of consciousness. In this domain, the idea of a default resting state is the fruit of the work by the American researcher, Marcus Raichle, from the University of Washington, who showed in 2001, using positron emission tomography (PET), that because certain regions of the cortex consumed more energy, they were more active than others in the inactive awakened subject.

In fact, this should come as no surprise, since an immobile person in a scanner, with their eyes closed and receiving no instructions, inevitably thinks of certain things that the bench scientist cannot control. Sometimes an internal dialogue will start (Which dress shall I wear tonight? What title shall I give my article?), and a little voice will be heard, whose presence everyone feels in their inner depths; sometimes the person’s attention will be attracted by external elements, such as surrounding noises. In short, he/she can never ignore his/her internal or external world. Neither is it surprising that the cerebral regions involved are precisely those most affected in subjects plunged into a coma or a vegetative state.


[1] BOLY M., BALTEAU E., SCHNAKERS C., DEGUELDRE C., MOONEN G., LUXEN A., PHILLIPS C., PEIGNEUX P., MAQUET P. et LAUREYS S. , Baseline brain activity fluctuations predict somatosensory perception in humans, in PNAS, 2007, 104(29):12187-92.