Scientists communicate with patients in vegetative state
Last updated 04/02/2010 14:16:55
Scientists communicate with patients in vegetative state
In a huge breakthrough, scientists have been able to communicate with a brain damaged man, diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.
In the pioneering research, carried out in the UK and in Belgium, the team were able to reach into the mind of the patient, using a new brain scanning method.
The scientists were effectively able to communicate with his thoughts and awareness was detected in three other patients previously diagnosed in the state.
Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage. Yet the study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows the scans can detect signs of awareness in patients thought to be cut off from the world.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used, which showed brain activity in real time. Patients, together with healthy volunteers were asked to imagine playing tennis while they were being scanned. In each of the volunteers this stimulated activity in the pre-motor cortex, part of the brain which deals with movement. This happened too in four out of 23 of the patients presumed to be in a vegetative state.
A Belgian man injured in a traffic accident seven years ago was able to communicate "yes" and "no" using just his thoughts. He responded accurately to five out of six autobiographical questions posed by the scientists - confirming his father's name, for example.
The Medical Research Council (MRC), the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre in Cambridge and a Belgian team at the University of Liege collaborated on the research.Dr Adrian Owen from the MRC said: "We were astonished when we saw the results of the patient's scan and that he was able to correctly answer the questions that were asked by simply changing his thoughts."
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