Source: The New York Times, Sept 28, 2003 p52 (NYT magazine)
Title: What if There Is Something Going On in There?
...Traditionally, there have essentially been only two ways to classify [severely brain-damaged patients]: as comatose (eyes closed and responses limited to basic reflexes) or vegetative (eyes opening and closing in a cycle of sleeping and waking but without any sign of awareness).In either case, it has been assumed that they have no high-level thought. But...researchers are studying people like Rios and finding that the truth is far more complicated. Their evidence suggests that even after an injury that leaves a brain badly damaged, even after months or years with little sign of consciousness, people may still be capable of complex mental activity...
[While an MRI brain scan was being performed on patient Daniel Rios, a man diagnosed as being in a 'vegetative state,'] a 40-second loop of a recording made by Rios's sister Maria played through the headphones: she told him that she was there with him, that she loved him...
As the tape of his sister's voice played, several distinct clusters of neurons in Rios's brain had fired in a manner virtually identical to that of a healthy subject. Some clusters that became active were those known to help process spoken language, others to recall memories.
Was Rios recognizing his sister's voice, remembering her? "You couldn't tell the difference between these parts of his brain and the brain of one of my graduate students," says Hirsch, an expert in brain imaging at Columbia University.
Please email this to Neal Boortz, who is yammering on and on about Terri being a vegetable. Pull the plug, he decrees!
I'll take Savage over this pompous a$$ any day of the week!
Part of the problem is the terminology. When I use the term "vegetative," I mean "comparable to a vegetable." It is my understanding that vegetables are not sentient; they do not feel pain. Therefore, if a person is capable of feeling pain, I would not consider him to be in a vegetative state.
If the medical community is not 100% sure that a person cannot feel pain, it should not refer to his state as vegetative. :-)