A look at some of the differences between states of consciousness and brain death: Brain death: These patients are no longer alive. There has been an irreversible cessation of all activity in both the ...

Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout to include Friedemann Müller's comments as reported by Spiegel Online. A woman in the United Arab Emirates who was in what can be described as a ...

PHILADELPHIA — For two decades, car-crash victim Rom Houben lay paralyzed and voiceless in what his doctors thought was a vegetative state. He appeared to be awake, but showed no signs of awareness.

A cognitively impaired woman at a nursing facility in Arizona gave birth to a baby last month, prompting a sexual-assault investigation and a cascade of news reports. When the 29-year-old patient at ...