Doctors communicate with a man in a coma

The ABC is reporting that doctors have used MRI scans to communicate with a patient who had previously been though to be in a vegetative state.

A man in a deeply unconscious state for five years has been able to communicate with doctors using just his thoughts in a study scientists say is a "game changer" for care of vegetative state patients.

British and Belgian researchers used a functional MRI (fMRI) scan to show the man, who suffered a severe brain injury in a road accident in 2003, was able to think "yes" or "no" answers to questions by wilfully changing his brain activity.

Experts say the result means all patients in coma-like states should be reassessed and it may change the way they are cared for.

After detecting signs of awareness, the doctors scanned the man's brain while he was asked to say "yes" or "no" to questions such as, "is your father's name Thomas?".

The results showed that by changing his brain activity, the man communicated his answer.

"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," said Adrian Owen, co-author of the study from the Medical Research Council.

"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."
The man, now 29, was one of 23 patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state who were scanned.

The scans detected signs of awareness in four patients, the researchers wrote in their study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The fMRI method used can decipher the brain's answers to questions in healthy people with 100 per cent accuracy, but it has never been tried before in patients unable to move or speak.

Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, said the findings were a "game changer" that could "have a profound impact across medicine".

Whoa! I'll say...

The implications of this are boggling. To contemplate that rather than being 'brain dead' there was instead a conscious person probably screaming to get out is...well - overwhelming.

And the questions it raises... Has the person remained 'sane' while isolated? What did they feel when they realised they could communicate again? Given someone like Stephen Hawking has continued to do amazing science while profoundly quadriplegic, is there a chance that a comatose patient could resume some form of 'life'? And what of those who have watched a loved one in such a state for years? How will they cope with this news?

One thing's for sure (and without meaning to sound at all trite) there's a solid movie script there.