Wednesday 13 June 2012

The Not so Vegetative State: Neuroscience develops! Nature Magazine notes the 'mind reading' abilities of MRI machines which let 'human vegetable patients' communicate!

(SACNS)


The Not so Vegetative State: Neuroscience develops! Nature Magazine notes the 'mind reading' abilities of MRI machines which let 'human vegetable patients' communicate!

'Adrian Owen still gets animated when he talks about patient 23. The patient was only 24 years old when his life was devastated by a car accident. Alive but unresponsive, he had been languishing in what neurologists refer to as a vegetative state for five years, when Owen, a neuro-scientist then at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues at the University of Liège in Belgium, put him into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and started asking him questions.

Incredibly, he provided answers. A change in blood flow to certain parts of the man's injured brain convinced Owen that patient 23 was conscious and able to communicate. It was the first time that anyone had exchanged information with someone in a vegetative state.'

Nature Magazine | 'Neuroscience: The mind reader; Adrian Owen has found a way to use brain scans to communicate with people previously written off as unreachable. Now, he is fighting to take his methods to the clinic' by David Cyranoski at Nature 486, 178–180 (14 June 2012) doi:10.1038/486178a

http://www.nature.com/news/neuroscience-the-mind-reader-1.10816
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Neuroscience: The mind reader »
Adrian Owen has found a way to use brain scans to communicate with people previously written off as unreachable.

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