[quasque]

Consciousness in the medical sense can be considered along axes of wakefulness and awareness. For example, in a coma the subject is neither aware nor awake.

In contrast, patients in a persistent vegetative state are awake, but not aware. It sounds like the researchers may have replicated this state of consciousness, which would imply that the claustrum is important in awareness, but perhaps not as critical in wakefulness, at least in this particular subject (keeping in mind that her brain is already abnormal in some sense due to epilepsy and neurosurgery that excised the left side of her hippocampus).

This paper has a nice review of the topic: http://www.coma.ulg.ac.be/papers/vs/2005_VS_TICS.pdf