The last thing you remember is crashing your car. You end up in the hospital with major brain damage and slip into a coma for an extremely long time. When you wake up, you can finally see and hear what’s going on around you– your family and friends and doctors talking to you and asking questions. You understand exactly what they are saying, but your body just won’t move the way it should and you can’t even turn your eyes to glance at them. You can’t wiggle your toes to prove to your doctor that you’re “in there,” and after nine or ten years, the people around you start giving up hope.
Sound like a pretty bad situation? Unfortunately, this might be a true story for many survivors of serious accidents or illnesses who are classified as “vegetative” (they haven’t shown signs of awareness for six months). “Vegetative” people have basic reflexes and can breathe, make noises, and move their eyes, but are unable to track movements with their eyes, or perform voluntary movements when they are told to.
Until recently, there hasn’t been much evidence that vegetative people were truly aware of their surroundings. But this changed in 2006, when Dr. Adrian Owen found a way to communicate with people who couldn’t move; using an fMRI machine (functional magnetic resonance imaging), he identified two different brain areas that were activated when the patient imagined herself playing tennis, and when she thought about walking through her house. Playing tennis caused parts of the motor cortex to light up, while exploring the house activated another area in the center of the brain. Dr. Owen then asked several vegetative people obvious questions, like “Is the sky blue?” or “Do you have three siblings?” and they would think about tennis for yes, and house for no. The patients shocked doctors and scientists everywhere by answering almost all of the questions correctly.
Terri Schiavo– could fMRI have allowed her to communicate with her family?
(Photo courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com)
As soon as the public realized that fMRI can be used to communicate with vegetative people, everyone wanted this technology to become more accessible so they could use it. Right now, Dr. Owen is working on making fMRI machines more portable and user-friendly so family members of these accident victims could take advantage of it.
fMRI machines are bulky and expensive to run.
(Photo courtesy of Bing Images)
This discovery also brings up many more questions. What brain areas can be activated by other simpler thoughts (since walking through your house or playing tennis would take at least 30 seconds to imagine)? Will fMRI technology become advanced enough that you can guess exactly what the person’s thoughts are, without having to ask yes-no questions? And on a more serious note, can we rely on these machines to ask patients if they want to end their life support? There are lots of possibilities, and I’m excited to see where this will go in the future!
Sources:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/man-supposed-vegetative-state-communicates/story?id=17716726&singlePage
http://www.nature.com/news/neuroscience-the-mind-reader-1.10816
Wow, what amazing technology. I cannot even fathom the thought of losing a loved one to a terrible occurrence such as this. The family and friends that have been affected by an accident causing “vegetative”-ness must be so excited to see new technology. To lose communication with someone who used to be able to function as an average human being is heartbreaking. It is amazing and truly inspiring to see how advanced technology has become. This post made me hopeful for the future of technology. This view often gets fogged with ethical and moral issues, but being able to communicate with a “lost” loved one is not controversial at all. I love this new technology and hope it continues far into the future.
Wow! That is amazing! I hope this technology continues to move forward and that Dr. Owen can continue his research in this field. It is great to think that eventually, family and friends may be able to speak to their loved ones who are in a coma or vegetative state. That being said, do you think that it is morally right to use a machine to ask patients if they want to be taken off life support? Do you think this machine could be used to find a way to bring people out of comas? This is such an interesting discovery, and I can’t wait to hear more about it in the future.
This is some crazy cool technology. It makes me so happy to think that some people may now be able to communicate with their family members. Though, looking at the size of that machine, I feel it has a long way to go before it’s ready to be used in the home. I think the two parts of the area that are being utilized is really interesting. I want to know what other parts of the brain can be utilized, what other things people can think of to answer questions. I don’t think this technology could be used to ask patients if they wanted to be taken off of life support, it’s not advanced enough, it would be too risky. But maybe in the future, I could see it evolving into something much better. Do you think that morally, we should allow people to make the decision on whether they should be taken off of life support or not using this technology?