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You bring up a good point and it is one that I've thought about over and over. How many times have you gone to visit someone who seems to be on their deathbed, and have been told by those in the medical profession to go ahead and talk to them? They say that the sense of hearing is one of the last to go. John Douglas is a classic example, as is Rus Cooper-Dowda. I'm sure there are countless more that go unnamed. Some of the newest research going on in brain-injured patients is learning that their brains are still hearing the outside world, because their brain activity goes all wild on MRIs and PET scans during this type of testing where they wear headphones with recorded songs or familiar voices pumping through them. Just because Terri (or other supposedly PVS patients) may not always be able to respond doesn't mean that their input is messed up, just the output! Thanks for sharing about John Douglas' story. If it weren't for your post, I probably never would have heard of him.

As far as getting communication out of the allegedly comatose and PVS, I've been wondering about a combination of brain monitor and Morse(or Morse-like) code, with biofeedback (sounds produced by brain monitor). If someone like Terri could be taught to modulate their brain activity well enough to tap out a message, even if they are unable to muster any coordinated voluntary motion, it could be a breakthrough.