Article Summary #8

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/24475/
Brain Imaging Lets Vegetative Patient Communicate
After a brain injury, some patients are left in a state of “persistent lack of awareness” as stated by a researcher in the New England Journal of Medicine. After breakthrough experimentation, scientists believe that these brain dead patients, even though unable to communicate, can answer yes or no questions. Scientists can sense the response of the patient by looking at images of the brain. People in this condition are sometimes hard to diagnose, because of their lack of ability to communicate. With this new technology, scientists may be able to better diagnose patients with certain symptoms. Adrian Owens, a neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, England and his colleagues discovered that a patient suffering severe brain damage from a car accident could mentally respond to a series of commands even while showing no signs of consciousness. Consciousness is a whole issue in and of itself, because of the difficulty involved with diagnosing brain damage victims. A lot of times, patients with these symptoms are said to be in a state of coma, even though in some cases patients were conscience but unable to respond. Recently, a test on a 22 year old man was done who was diagnosed to be “vegetative” after a car accident. This patient was told to imagine a game of tennis being played if the answer to a question was “yes” and to imagine his house if the answer was “no”. This patient answered 5 questions correctly, just based off the images that were created in his mind. This research proves to be promising for patients that suffer severe brain damage.