For five years he lay mute and immobile beneath a diagnosis – vegetative state – that all ruled out the possibility of thought, much less recovery. To the outside world, the 29-year old patient from Belgium – who suffered a severe head injury in a road accident in 2003 – appeared unconscious and incapable of communicating. But on Thursday, the man spoke – using only his mind. Scientists are calling it the world’s first “conversation” with a patient in a permanent vegetative state.
They say the breakthrough has enormous implications for the treatment of vegetative patients. With the ability to communicate, patients could request pain relief, or even indicate if they wanted to end their life. Dr Adrian Owen, whose Medical Research Council team in Cambridge, London made the first contact, scanned the patient’s head using a state-of-the-art equipment. They were shocked to find that the man could reply to questions by willfully changing his brain activity.
The man’s brainwaves were monitored using a device called a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan (FMRI) that uses magnetic fields to detect surges of blood flow in the head. For years, pro-euthanasia campaigners have claimed those in a vegetative state deserve the right to die. But the latest findings proves that many may still have active minds. The findings will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine at the end of this month.