Tudamorf
09-09-2006, 12:40 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060908/ap_on_he_me/vegetative_brain_8WASHINGTON - Advanced brain scanning uncovered startling signs of awareness in a woman in a vegetative state, British scientists reported Thursday — a finding that complicates one of medicine's ethical minefields.
The work is sure to elicit pleas from families desperate to know if loved ones deemed beyond medical help have brain activity that doctors don't suspect. "Can he or she hear and understand me?" is a universal question.
The woman was injured in a car crash. By the time Owen scanned her brain five months later, she had been pronounced in a vegetative state — physically unresponsive to a battery of tests. A small percentage of people make some recovery after spending a short period in a vegetative state.
Owen and colleagues contend their fMRI experiment showed the car-crash victim had some preserved conscious awareness despite her vegetative state.
How could they tell? First, they checked that she could process speech. Upon being told "there was milk and sugar in the coffee," the fMRI showed brain regions reacting the same in the woman and in healthy volunteers.
Then came the big test. Owen told the woman to perform a mental task — to imagine herself playing tennis and walking through her house. Motor-control regions of her brain lit up like they did in the healthy people he compared with her.
"There is no other explanation for this than that she has intentionally decided to involve herself in the study and do what we asked when we asked," Owen said in an interview.
Other scientists say that's not clear-cut.
The results are "not totally convincing of consciousness," neuroscientist Lionel Naccache of INSERM, France's national science institute, wrote in a review in Science. He cautioned that the woman's injuries weren't as massive as those of most vegetative-state patients.
Columbia's Hirsch said the woman is not conscious. But, "it tells me that this patient's brain is operating the essential elements for consciousness. The machinery is there and operating," she said.It's definitely interesting, but I still believe vegetative-state patients should be allowed to die in peace, if that's what they (or their closest relative) wish.
The work is sure to elicit pleas from families desperate to know if loved ones deemed beyond medical help have brain activity that doctors don't suspect. "Can he or she hear and understand me?" is a universal question.
The woman was injured in a car crash. By the time Owen scanned her brain five months later, she had been pronounced in a vegetative state — physically unresponsive to a battery of tests. A small percentage of people make some recovery after spending a short period in a vegetative state.
Owen and colleagues contend their fMRI experiment showed the car-crash victim had some preserved conscious awareness despite her vegetative state.
How could they tell? First, they checked that she could process speech. Upon being told "there was milk and sugar in the coffee," the fMRI showed brain regions reacting the same in the woman and in healthy volunteers.
Then came the big test. Owen told the woman to perform a mental task — to imagine herself playing tennis and walking through her house. Motor-control regions of her brain lit up like they did in the healthy people he compared with her.
"There is no other explanation for this than that she has intentionally decided to involve herself in the study and do what we asked when we asked," Owen said in an interview.
Other scientists say that's not clear-cut.
The results are "not totally convincing of consciousness," neuroscientist Lionel Naccache of INSERM, France's national science institute, wrote in a review in Science. He cautioned that the woman's injuries weren't as massive as those of most vegetative-state patients.
Columbia's Hirsch said the woman is not conscious. But, "it tells me that this patient's brain is operating the essential elements for consciousness. The machinery is there and operating," she said.It's definitely interesting, but I still believe vegetative-state patients should be allowed to die in peace, if that's what they (or their closest relative) wish.