Thaindian News

London, Feb 4 (IANS) British scientists are hailing a world-first ‘conversation’ with a man diagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state, a media report said Thursday.
They say the breakthrough has enormous implications for the care and treatment of vegetative patients, the Daily mail reported on its website.

With the ability to communicate, patients could request pain relief, or even indicate if they wanted to end their life.

Adrian Owen of Cambridge University, who led the research team, said: “They can now have some involvement in their destiny.”

To the outside world, the 29-year-old patient - who suffered a severe head injury in a road accident in 2003 - appeared unconscious and incapable of communicating.

But Owen’s team used a brain scanner to tap into his thoughts and monitor how he reacted to questions.

The man answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ by conjuring up imaginary scenes that signalled a response.

Experts say the breakthrough ‘changes everything’ about classifying consciousness disorders.

The man was among 23 patients included in a three-year study by Medical Research Council scientists in Cambridge and University of Liege in Belgium.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure activity in two different brain regions registering motor and spatial responses while the patients imagined specific scenes.

Magnetic fields and radio waves detected blood-flow surges in each area which ‘lit up’ the scans. For the ‘motor’ task, patients were asked to imagine standing on a tennis court and swinging an arm to return balls from an instructor.

To activate the ’spatial’ region, they had to imagine walking from room to room in their home. In four patients, the scans detected activity in the appropriate brain region as they carried out the scientists’ verbal instructions.

But the 29-year-old man, who had produced reliable responses, was singled out for an even more remarkable test, says the New England Journal of Medicine.

Told to use ‘motor’ or ’spatial’ imagery as ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers, he correctly answered the first five of six autobiographical questions.

He was asked ‘is your father’s name Alexander?’ and correctly answered ‘yes’ by imagining the tennis scene. When he was asked ‘is your father’s name Thomas?’ he answered ‘no’ by thinking about walking around the house.

When the sixth question was asked, virtually no activity was seen. Scientists believe the patient had fallen asleep or simply failed to hear the question.

Owen said: “We were astonished when we saw the results of the patient’s scan. Not only did these scans tell us that the patient was not in a vegetative state, but, more importantly, for the first time in years it provided the patient with a way of communicating his thoughts to the outside world.”

He said fMRI scanning was an expensive tool but in future, computer devices might help patients to communicate whether they needed pain relief or would like to try new drugs.

He said: “Just for patients to exercise some autonomy is a massive step forward.”

There are normally fewer than 100 patients in Britain in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) at any time. PVS is diagnosed in patients who have been in a coma for three years without being able to communicate or have any understanding of what is being said.