Patients with severe brain injuries often have slow accumulating recoveries of function. Recently, the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) published data on their long-term outcomes of over 9,000 patients, 400 of which suffered disorders of consciousness (Nakase-Richardson et al. 2012). Patients were followed for 1, 2, and 5 year outcomes and several important and unexpected results were obtained: a large majority of patients initially in minimally conscious state (MCS) continued to improve recovering consciousness within a year and recovery was demonstrated to continue at the 2 and 5 year timepoints for as many as 20% of patients. In these cases outcomes included vocational reentry. Other studies have confirmed that MCS recovery can occur over long-time periods and lead to good outcomes or significant recovery of meaningful cognitive function despite enduring convalesce in MCS (Luaute et al. 2010, Lammi et al. 2005).