If the research is correct, physicians may determine which patients in comas or unresponsive vegetative states are minimally conscious. These patients may be aware of their surroundings to some extent.
I haven't decided whether it would be a curse or a blessing to know that a loved one in a vegetative state is aware of his or her surroundings. I think it would be both.
Joe Biden proved this..
The Euthanasia People will not like this News.
Fascinating.
“I haven’t decided whether it would be a curse or a blessing to know that a loved one in a vegetative state is aware of his or her surroundings. I think it would be both.”
Only a curse for Mike Schiavo and a surprising number of alleged Freepers here, who were absolutely against either “supportive” Bush brother stepping in to save Mrs. Schiavo from being murdered.
Can someone here explain exactly what that pic is showing? Is the ‘mokawk” an electrical field outside the head?
So let me get this straight.
Before they found this, they knew for certain that people were dead when they had no apparent brain activity.
Now they've discovered this, they know that was wrong.
So now they'll run with this.
And then they'll find something else that proves this wasn't the definitive proof they thought it was either.
And then that new finding will be the definitive proof until the next discovery.
Another-words, they are quite likely still clueless.
Now, this just highlights an even more important question. If they have just now discovered this “hidden” activity, how do they know there is not some other form of “hidden” activity yet to be discovered in other patients that appear to be truly vegetative?
That fact is that they can’t know that one way or the other. Yet, they will happily end the lives of those patients anyway.
This is a significant step forward in brain science but consciousness does not arise from brain activity.
I have a simple test. If you offer me several Hershey bars, a free romp in the sack with the Playmate of the Year, a Hellcat-equipped Dodge Challenger for $10 a month and an afternoon in an Apache Helicopter with unlimited ammo to shoot, and I appear not to be interested in any of them, THEN I’M DEAD.
how can one be aware while dead?
They say their study, published today in the journal Science, shows the woman was conscious despite her coma-like state, although several experts disagree.
The researchers stress that the study is unlikely to shed light on issues such as the case of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who spent 15 years in a persistent vegetative state and was allowed to die in March 2005 after a long court battle.
Dr Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge and colleagues in the UK and Belgium, used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to look at the woman's brain in action.
The 23-year-old woman, who was injured in a car accident, had been unresponsive, unable to communicate, and met the clinical criteria for a vegetative state, the researchers say.
They looked at her brain function when listening to sentences such as, "There was milk and sugar in his coffee." The brain scan lit up in very similar ways to those seen in healthy volunteers, Owen's team found.
The researchers then asked the woman to imagine certain acts.
"One task involved imagining playing a game of tennis and the other involved imagining visiting all of the rooms of her house, starting from the front door," the researchers write.
Her scan lit up in virtually the same places as the brains of the healthy volunteers asked to do the same thing.
"These results confirm that ... this patient retained the ability to understand spoken commands and to respond to them through her brain activity, rather than through speech or movement," the researchers write.
She also clearly intended to cooperate, which "confirmed beyond any doubt that she was consciously aware of herself and her surroundings", they write.
"This is unlikely the case for all vegetative patients," Owen's team cautions in its report.
Experts note the woman had relatively little brain damage, and say traumatic brain injury often heals better than injury caused by stroke or heart attack such as Schiavo suffered.
Schiavo also had been in her state for far longer than the UK woman, allowing for severe deterioration of her brain.
Dr Ross Zafonte, a brain rehabilitation expert at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, says the study shows a unique way of assessing brain function using scans.
"They raise a whole issue regarding consciousness and how we use this term," Zafonte says.
"Is she just a rare bird? Will we see this on a more common basis?"
Other brain experts are sceptical.
"If this patient is actually conscious, why wouldn't she be able to engage in intentional overt motor acts, given that she had not suffered functional or structural lesion of the motor pathways?" asks Dr Lionel Naccache of France's INSERM research institute in a commentary published with the report.
He says the patient apparently has "a rich mental life, including auditory language processing and the ability to perform mental imagery tasks".
The study points to a need to develop better scans to assess a patient's brain status, Naccache says.
Dr Paul Matthews, a neuroscientist at Imperial College London and University of Oxford, says the study does not demonstrate consciousness.
"Response to stimuli, even complex linguistic stimuli, does not provide evidence of a 'decision' to respond. Withdrawal from an unexpected painful pin prick does not represent a 'decision' to respond," he says.