For seven years the man lay in a hospital bed, showing no signs of consciousness since sustaining a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. His doctors were convinced he was in a vegetative state. Until now.
To the astonishment of his medical team, the patient has been able to communicate with the outside world after scientists worked out, in effect, a way to read his thoughts.
They devised a technique to enable the man, now 29, to answer yes and no to simple questions through the use of a hi-tech scanner, monitoring his brain activity.
To answer yes, he was told to think of playing tennis, a motor activity. To answer no, he was told to think of wandering from room to room in his home, visualising everything he would expect to see there, creating activity in the part of the brain governing spatial awareness.
His doctors were amazed when the patient gave the correct answers to a series of questions about his family. The experiment will fuel the controversy of when a patient should have life support removed.
It also raises the prospect of some form of communication with those who have been shut off from life, perhaps for years. To read the rest of the story, click here
The scariest part of this for me is that the guy was lying in a bed for five years with no way to communicate, and all of a sudden, we can talk to him again. Imagine the pain of isolation he must have felt, and the frustration of five years of silence.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this sets a precedent very high proving patients "brain dead," which means the decision of whether or not to remove life support becomes even more complicated. Still, it's hard to imagine the man's elation when he was finally able to communicate with the world.