Josh Villa was 26-years old when he had a car accident. He ended up in a deep coma, unresponsive when someone talked to him, and not able to move any part of his body. Dr Theresa Pape, from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, however, wasn’t willing to give up on him and enrolled Josh in a ‘six-week study in which an electromagnetic coil was held over the front of his head.’

This therapy aims at stimulating certain brain cells, which are not active when a person is in a coma.

After 15 sessions Villa opened his eyes, and looked at the people treating him. Later he started obeying simple commands, such as ‘move your right hand’ and ‘your thumb.’ Again a little later he could produce single words, such as ‘help’ and ‘erm.’

Since there was no further progress after 30 sessions, Dr. Pape send Villa to his mother. Villa’s mother was happy to see her son being able to communicate at least a little bit with her, saying that taking care of him had become much easier. 

Doctors are now contemplating using magnatic field therapy on other coma patients as well. Some of them, however, fear that the therapy may not have been the (sole) cause for Villa’s progress. “I believe that electromagnetic treatments such as deep brain stimulation, direct current transcranial stimulation, and TMS may all have therapeutic promise. However, proving their efficacy is very challenging because of the confounding and highly variable effects of natural recovery,” said Dr John Whyte, from the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute in Philadelphia.