A patient in a ‘vegetative’ or minimally conscious state has been able to communicate “Yes” and “No” answers via an MRI scanner.
A research project on the use of advanced functional MRI (fMRI) scanners to monitor brain activity in patients with severe brain injury points to a potential breakthrough in treatment of these conditions.
Researchers in the UK and Belgium scanned the brains of 54 patients while asking them to perform mental tasks. The research was based at referral centres in Cambridge, UK and Liège, Belgium.
A 29-year-old Belgian who had suffered severe head injuries was asked questions such as “Is your father’s name Thomas?” The researchers asked him to imagine “playing tennis” if the answer was “Yes”. The fMRI showed that the patient’s brain became active in the area that controls movement.
Co-author Dr Adrian Owen from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit said: “We were astonished when we saw the results of the patient’s scan and that he was able to correctly answer the questions that were asked by simply changing his thoughts.
“Not only did these scans tell us that the patient was not in a vegetative state, but more importantly, for the first time in five years it provided the patient with a way of communicating his thoughts to the outside world.”
Co-author Dr Steven Laureys from the University of Liège commented: “In the future we hope to develop this technique to allow some patients to express their feelings and thoughts, control their environment and increase their quality of life.”
The authors noted that doctors have great difficulty diagnosing brain disorders through bedside testing. They concluded that brain scanning “may be useful in establishing basic communication with patients who appear to be unresponsive.”