Author information: Steven Laureys graduated as a Medical Doctor from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, in 1993. While specialising in neurology he entered a research career and obtained his M.Sc. in Pharmaceutical Medicine working on pain and stroke using in vivo microdialysis and diffusion MRI in the rat (1997). Drawn by functional neuroimaging, he moved to the Cyclotron Research Center at the University of Liège, Belgium, where he obtained his Ph.D. studying residual brain function in the vegetative state in 2000. He is board-certified in neurology (1998) and in end-of-life and palliative medicine (2004). He edited The Boundaries of Consciousness (Elsevier 2005) and co-edited The Neurology of Consciousness (Academic Press 2009). He currently leads the Coma Science Group at the Cyclotron Research Centre of the University of Liège, Belgium. He is clinical professor of neurology, at the Liège University Hospital and Senior Research Associate at the National Fund for Scientific Research. Since 2008, Laureys is chair of the European Neurological Society Subcommittee on Coma and Disorders of Consciousness [2] and since 2009 he is invited professor at the Royal Academy of Belgium. His team assesses the recovery of neurological disability and of neuronal plasticity in severely brain damaged patients with altered states of consciousness by means of multimodal functional neuroimaging. It aims at characterising the brain structure and the residual cerebral function in patients who survive a severe brain injury: patients in coma, vegetative state, minimally conscious state and locked in syndrome. The importance of this project is twofold. First, these patients represent a problem in terms of diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and daily management. Second, these patients offer the opportunity to explore human consciousness, which is presently one major conundrum neurosciences have to solve. Indeed, these patients present a complete, nearly graded, range of conscious states from unconsciousness (coma) to full awareness (locked-in syndrome). This research confronts clinical expertise and bedside behavioural evaluation of altered states of consciousness.