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" A commonly used sleeping pill has the power to temporarily revive patients in permanent vegetative states to the point at which they can hold conversations, researchers have claimed.  Reporting their findings in the NeuroRehabilitation journal, South African scientists claim that the sleeping pill zolpidem caused three brain damaged patients to be roused from their vegetative state for periods of up to four hours at a time.  The three patients had suffered brain damage as a result of car accidents, and had been unresponsive to their familiar for months or years.  However, 20 minutes after taking the pill the patients were able to interact with their families, answering simple questions.  Dr Ralf Clauss, one of the researchers who carried out the study, said that the drug &#150; normally used to treat insomnia &#150; appears to reverse some of the effects of brain damage on the receptor cells in the brain.  He said: &amp;quot;For every damaged area of the brain, there is a dormant area, which seems to be a sort of protective mechanism.  &amp;quot;The damaged tissue is dead, there&amp;#039;s nothing you can do, but it&#146;s the dormant areas which &amp;#039;wake up&amp;#039;.&amp;quot;  However, other experts have raised doubts over the findings, suggesting that the patients in the study may not have been in true permanent vegetative states, as these are known to be impossible to wake from.  \u00A9 Adfero Ltd "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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