Woman In Vegetative State Communicated Through Her Thoughts, page 1

posted on Sep, 8 2006 @ 10:13 PM

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A woman who was in a vegative state seems to have been able to communicate to doctors using her thoughts. Five months after being in a vegative state, doctors were using a FMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to map her brain activity, while they were doing this they asked her to imagine herself doing various things, after that, it appeared that she understood the verbal command and was actually vasualizing herself doing various things, according to the new readings they would recieve of her brain waves after each command.

www.medicalnewstoday.com
Team leader Dr Adrian Owen, Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK said "The tasks we chose are based on many years of brain imaging research that shows different areas of the brain are activated when we perform different kinds of tasks."

The scientists were startled to find that her brain patterns, when she was asked to imagine herself playing tennis or moving around her home, displayed the same activated cortical areas in a manner indistinguishable from that of the healthy volunteers.

Dr. Owen added, "It tells us the patient could understand speech, because of course, we asked her to do these things. It also tells us that she is able to perform simple tasks in her head, such as imagining certain scenarios. We see this as a proof of principle: we have found a way to show that a patient is aware when existing clinical methods have been unable to provide that information

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This is surely going to cause some people to start screaming murder. Especially after the tug of war that was in the media a while back about Terri Schiavo having her feeding tube removed in Florida.

Obviously at the very least, this will become a new way to test if a person is actually "brain dead".

Astyanax

posted on Sep, 9 2006 @ 12:32 AM

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It just gets worse and worse.

At least, in the past, you only had to wait till the doctors declared you 'vegetative' before enjoying the blessed release of getting your plug pulled.

Now you'll have to endure the horror of being trapped inside your own helpless body until your brain dies.

Modern science + belief in ancient, vengeful deities = the horror, the horror.

Keyhole

posted on Sep, 9 2006 @ 11:43 AM

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Imagine the horror of not being able to communicate with anybody and unable to move, yet being aware of everything around you and understanding what people are saying around you, when, in your presence, they say, "We're going to let you die, it will be peaceful and painless though".

If you didn't want to die, you still had hope and the will to survive, and understood what they were saying, I doubt it would be a peaceful or painless death, at least not mentally.

mythatsabigprobe

posted on Sep, 10 2006 @ 06:21 AM

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Can you honestly imagine being in that state and NOT wanting to die? I agree with astyanax, pure horror made worse.