Scientists have found a new way to measure the level of awareness in a brain-injured person who is in coma and predict whether they will recover consciousness within a year. The precise diagnosis of recovery of consciousness of patients after a severe brain injury is a challenging clinical task, as some brain-injured patients retain certain levels of awareness despite appearing fully unresponsive. scientists have now found that readily obtainable measures of the amount of glucose (sugar) consumed by the brain can directly predict a person's current level of awareness or the likelihood that they will recover awareness within a year.