Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-27186569-20170521134631/@comment-25936766-20170608165451

The Devil&#039;s Advocate WP wrote: My point here is that if an Aura transfer does pass on memories than the lack of memories Penny has could be attributed to the state of the person to whom the Aura previously belonged. ....I'm not sure that it would/could happen if the person was in a coma, or even in a vegetative state.

A coma is literally just losing consciousness. The only major things that happen during a coma is that the individual does not respond to any stimuli, does not wake up, and does not initiate voluntary actions.

If you wake up, you will remember everything you can from before falling comatose, because Memory Loss is not inherently related to comas. You will simply not remember everything in between, because you were not conscious. No different from not remembering what happened while you were asleep.

Now, assuming the coma was caused by head trauma, then there could be memory loss due to the trauma, though that's unrelated to the coma itself.

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Now, a vegetative state is similar, but different. In a coma, you are neither awake nor aware. In VS, you are awake, but are not aware, and the chances of regaining awareness diminish over time. If it lasts 4+ weeks, it's called Persistent Vegetative State, and if it lasts a year or more, it's "Permanent".

Basically, patients with VS can open their eyes, and demonstrate sleep-wake cycles, but lack their cognitive functionality. For example, a person in PVS can open their eyes when fed, and is capable of swallowing even. People in a coma, meanwhile, are more like in a seemingly-eternal sleep, and don't respond to stimuli, period.

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So overall, even if Penny's "real body" pre-transfer was in a coma or PVS, Penny should still be able to remember things from before the transfer, since neither Comas nor PVS are actually related to Memory. It still works, they're just unable to actually remember things voluntarily or at all while they're in that state.

The only possible explanation here is that the coma/PVS was caused by head/brain trauma that coincidentally caused long-term memory loss prior to the transfer. But that's too convenient.