Ambien--For Sleeping, For Waking

Zolpidem (Ambien) has been available for over ten years, and for many it has been an extremely helpful aid for sleep. Now South African researchers are reporting that Zolpidem can be useful for "waking" people from a brain damaged state, temporarily.

Each of the three patients studied was given the drug every morning.

An improvement was seen within 20 minutes of taking the drug and wore off after four hours, when the patients restored to their permanent vegetative state.

Patient L had been in a vegetative state for three years, showing no response to touch and no reaction to his family.

After he was given Zolpidem, he was able to talk to them, answering simple questions.

Patient G was also able to answer simple questions and catch a basketball.

Patient N had been "constantly screaming", but stopped after being given the drug when he started watching TV and responding to his family.

Dr Ralf Clauss, now in the nuclear medicine department at the Royal Surrey Hospital was one of the researchers who carried out the study.

He told the BBC: "For every damaged area of the brain, there is a dormant area, which seems to be a sort of protective mechanism.

"The damaged tissue is dead, there's nothing you can do.

"But it's the dormant areas which 'wake up'."

Activity trigger

He said drugs like Zolpidem activate receptors for a chemical called GABA in nerve cells in the brain.

When brain damage occurs, these receptors appear to change shape, so they cannot behave as normal.

He said the drug appeared to cause the receptors in these dormant areas to change back to their normal shape, triggering nerve cell activity.

Dr Clauss added: "We are carrying out further research. The next step is to get rid of the sleepiness effect of the drug." Source.

This is a curious finding, and one that needs a good deal more examination and analysis. It is unlikely that the explanation for the mechanism of this phenomena is actually what is taking place. The finding is provocative, nevertheless, and may point to ways of maximising brain function in the brain injured patient. My personal view is that neurofeedback is quite underutilised in these cases.

Now if only someone could find a way to wake the masses of somnambulatory "normals." Or maybe we are better off the way it is?
:-)