This article has no abstract; the first 100 words appear below.

Responding to a verbal command such as “move your hand” with the appropriate motor action shows that a person can hear instructions, understand their meaning, engage regions of the brain to plan volitional movement, activate the motor cortex, and contract the appropriate muscles. Patients who do not perform the action are called “unresponsive.” Early in the course of an acute and severe neurologic event, the absence of the ability to follow commands has traditionally been thought to signify either that the brain injury is so severe that consciousness will never recover or that the ability to follow commands, along with . . .