Scans Reveal Vegetative Patients Are Aware

[buffalo]

Well well now …

Scans Reveal Vegetative Patients Are Aware

                            				Scientists have used a portable device that tracks changes in brain  waves to communicate with people in a vegetative state, some of whom  have been locked in their bodies for more than a year.

In a study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers showed it was possible to communicate with and detect awareness in people in a vegetative state using functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI.

The team then tried far less expensive, portable equipment to get a better idea of how many people classified as being in a vegetative state are actually aware of their surroundings.

The researchers instructed 16 people in a vegetative state to imagine they were making a fist with their right hand or wiggling their toes, and then measured brain activity while electrodes were attached to their scalp.

“It was possible to detect that these patients were actually aware” despite being diagnosed as being “entirely unconscious” using standard clinical assessments, said Professor Adrian Owen of the Center for Brain and Mind at the University of Western Ontario. Findings from the newer study were published in the British journal Lancet on Wednesday.

Read more: Scans Reveal Vegetative Patients Are Aware

 

[Holly3278]

This doesn’t surprise me in the least. But yet there will still be people who want to murder these people under the guise of “mercy killing”.

 

[meltzerboy]

Well well now …

Scans Reveal Vegetative Patients Are Aware

                            				Scientists have used a portable device that tracks changes in brain  waves to communicate with people in a vegetative state, some of whom  have been locked in their bodies for more than a year.

In a study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers showed it was possible to communicate with and detect awareness in people in a vegetative state using functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI.

The team then tried far less expensive, portable equipment to get a better idea of how many people classified as being in a vegetative state are actually aware of their surroundings.

The researchers instructed 16 people in a vegetative state to imagine they were making a fist with their right hand or wiggling their toes, and then measured brain activity while electrodes were attached to their scalp.

“It was possible to detect that these patients were actually aware” despite being diagnosed as being “entirely unconscious” using standard clinical assessments, said Professor Adrian Owen of the Center for Brain and Mind at the University of Western Ontario. Findings from the newer study were published in the British journal Lancet on Wednesday.

Read more: Scans Reveal Vegetative Patients Are Aware

I suspected this to be the case for a long while. The painful question that must now be asked is how much do these people know that they are in a near-vegetative state unable to move, communicate, and function normally? Still, this finding ups the ante on the discussion of euthanasia.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I suspected this to be the case for a long while. The painful question that must now be asked is how much do these people know that they are in a near-vegetative state unable to move, communicate, and function normally? Still, this finding ups the ante on the discussion of euthanasia.

For ages, health professionals have been instructed never to voice dire predictions or negative comments in the presence of a comatose person, because it has long been recognized that they can hear and that they might very well understand what is being said. The fact that they can’t respond does not mean they don’t.

So what this study does is confirm what health professionals have at least suspected for a very long time, and it’s good that it did.

 

[oldcelt]

The painful question that must now be asked is how much do these people know…

The same thought occured to me…what a terrible thing to be trapped in your own body.

John

 

[Dale_M]

The study is preliminary, but it does suggest a way to avoid misdiagnosing patients; separating vegetative patients who have no residual cognitive function from patients who do retain some cognitive function.

I think that is a very important finding and hope that more attention will be given to it…

BTW, here is a summary of the Lancet article which spurred this news report.
thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2811%2961224-5/fulltext