Scientists at University of Cambridge, England report that they have found hidden signatures in the brains of people in a vegetative state (abstract), which point to networks that could support consciousness even when a patient appears to be unconscious and unresponsive. The study could help doctors identify patients who are aware despite being unable to communicate.
Prior research employed fMRI (functional MRI) of patients who were asked to envision playing tennis and revealed that some of the patients had brain activity comparable to that of healthy and conscious adults. Unfortunately, fMRI is relatively expensive and not very commonly available.
These researchers used high-density electroencephalographs (EEG) and a branch of mathematics known as graph theory to study networks of activity in the brains of 32 patients diagnosed as vegetative and minimally conscious and compared them to healthy adults.
The researchers showed that the rich and diversely connected networks that support awareness in the healthy brain are typically — but importantly, not always — impaired in patients in a vegetative state.
The findings could help researchers develop a relatively simple way of identifying which patients might be aware whilst in a vegetative state
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Friday October 17 2014, @11:30PM
This is simultaneously awesome and completely horrifying!
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Saturday October 18 2014, @01:00AM
Dr Hibbert: Oh my. I think he's finally done it. I'm sorry to tell you that your father is a vegetable, Lisa.
Marge: Oh no, not a vegetable. Homer always hated vegetables.
Lisa: Dr. Hibbert, isn't there anything that you can do?
Dr. Hibbert: Well, I did read about this new theory …
[Dr. Hibbert turns to Homer and leans over him]
Dr. Hibbert: Homer? Homer, are you in there? Imagine you're playing tennis.
Homer's Brain: Ooh, tennis? I hate tennis.
[Dr. Hibbert turnsback to Marge]
Dr. Hibbert: I'm sorry Marge. No response.
Marge: You're not playing tennis, Homie. You're eating! You're at the donut factory again and you're running amok!
Homer's Brain: WooHoo! Donut heaven!
[Dr. Hibbert turns around quickly as Homer's pulse races and his stomach grumbles hungrily]
Dr. Hibbert: (a la Dr Frankenstein) He's alive! Alive!!
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday October 18 2014, @04:59AM
This actually is an interesting item you bring up. I don't play tennis and I'm not a fan of it. Nothing against the sport; I just don't enjoy it in any way what so ever and have zero interest. I never think about it. If I'm knocked out, my loved one should talk to me about lifting weights in the basement. I hate weight lifting and I hate the basement, but this is what I do on a regular basis. It should show up on a brain scan.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday October 18 2014, @03:28AM
This does have the potential to expose several of our members as being in persistent vegetative states, myself not excluded. Oh My Goodness, could this be what my therapist warned me about, before he suddenly went silent for no apparent reason?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TGV on Saturday October 18 2014, @07:34AM
The modals "could" and "might" are important in this respect. With the mentioned fMRI test, you can repeatedly test if there is a temporal, and therefore most likely causal, connection between communicating with the patient and subsequent brain activity. With the EEG test, there is no such thing. It's quite possible that the signature they measure is a result of meaningless basal brain activity, and therefore also present in truly vegetative patients, but it might also put the threshold too high and therefore be absent in non-vegetative comatose patients. An important problem with the study is that it was conducted on "patients with chronic disorders of consciousness, against normative data from healthy controls." To be meaningful, it should be conducted on comatose patients that respond positively to the fMRI test and that could be woken up vs. patients that do/could not. That would make the contrast more meaningful. The study also doesn't make clear how the EEG test could be performed on a single subject. So while this research could provide a basis for future research (and which study doesn't?), it cannot be applied to easily discriminate between patients as is.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday October 18 2014, @02:15PM
Unfortunately society already [wikipedia.org] snuffs [wikipedia.org] people without really understanding if and what they feel. And that seems a religious/ethics debate instead of being a scientific/contractual issue.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday October 18 2014, @06:31PM
You should choose better cases than those. In both, evidence before and after their death was rather unambiguous. The real ethical challenges are the ambiguous cases. Research such as in TFA is an attempt to remove the ambiguities.
The first was an especially bad case for your argument since her continued medical support was against her explicitly expressed wishes from before her injury.
We could make absolutely sure there was no suffering but that is still classified as murder so we have to do a funny dance with 'withdrawing artificial support' and risk suffering in order to satisfy a body of law that hasn't caught up with the state of modern medicine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @05:13PM
Did these 32 patients give informed consent before being experimented on?
FatPhil
(via phone, password forgotten)
(Score: 2) by tathra on Sunday October 19 2014, @02:11AM
i imagine consent was given by proxy, via power of attorney granted explicitly, in a living will, or implicitly, granted by the state to the spouse or close blood relative when the patient is unable to give consent themselves and has no designated health care proxy.