In 2006, when John Whyte first started studying the remarkable effect that the sleep medicine Ambien can have on people with severe brain damage, he hoped the drug might be a miracle treatment.

Six years later, Ambien's ability to rouse some people from oblivion remains tantalizingly mysterious. But Whyte, director of the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute in Elkins Park, no longer sees the drug as a potentially dramatic improvement in care.

Now he sees something far more complex

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20120222_Ambien_illustrates_mysteries_of_the_brain.html