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“It’s not OK to know this and do nothing,” co-author of the study says.
Not fully knowing the condition of the many people left in a vegetative state, uncommunicative and seemingly minimally conscious, is a painful situation for their loved ones. Some people live for years in such conditions, cut off from the world around them.
Now a large study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, points to clues that many of these people—as many as a quarter of them—may have more cognitive awareness and activity than previously thought.
Neurologists at six research centers, studying 241 unresponsive patients, found that, when asked to perform complex cognitive tasks for a few minutes—such as imagining themselves playing tennis—a full quarter of these patients showed the same brain activity as healthy people. The findings suggest that these people were indeed aware and able to think.
Dr. Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and a co-author of the study, told the New York Times that the results of the study means up to 100,000 patients in the United States alone might have some level of consciousness despite injuries that have left them unable to move or communicate.
“It’s not OK to know this and to do nothing,” he told the newspaper, adding that it should lead to more sophisticated examinations of people in such conditions and more research into finding alternative ways of communicating with them.
Schiff has been researching consciousness disorders in patients since the 1990s. Early on, he found that brain scans showed the state of the brain itself varied vastly from patient to patient, with some patients’ brains appearing to be almost completely damaged and others preserving large segments intact and healthy. A 2006 study using similar methods also showed similar results—some seemingly vegetative patients were aware and capable of thinking.
Continued below.
europeanconservative.com
Not fully knowing the condition of the many people left in a vegetative state, uncommunicative and seemingly minimally conscious, is a painful situation for their loved ones. Some people live for years in such conditions, cut off from the world around them.
Now a large study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, points to clues that many of these people—as many as a quarter of them—may have more cognitive awareness and activity than previously thought.
Neurologists at six research centers, studying 241 unresponsive patients, found that, when asked to perform complex cognitive tasks for a few minutes—such as imagining themselves playing tennis—a full quarter of these patients showed the same brain activity as healthy people. The findings suggest that these people were indeed aware and able to think.
Dr. Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and a co-author of the study, told the New York Times that the results of the study means up to 100,000 patients in the United States alone might have some level of consciousness despite injuries that have left them unable to move or communicate.
“It’s not OK to know this and to do nothing,” he told the newspaper, adding that it should lead to more sophisticated examinations of people in such conditions and more research into finding alternative ways of communicating with them.
Schiff has been researching consciousness disorders in patients since the 1990s. Early on, he found that brain scans showed the state of the brain itself varied vastly from patient to patient, with some patients’ brains appearing to be almost completely damaged and others preserving large segments intact and healthy. A 2006 study using similar methods also showed similar results—some seemingly vegetative patients were aware and capable of thinking.
Continued below.
Study: People in Vegetative State May Be Aware and Thinking
“It’s not OK to know this and do nothing,” co-author of the study says.
europeanconservative.com
