Brain damaged patient uses mind to tell neurologists he`s not in pain
Baku, November 17 (AZERTAC). A man thought to be in a permanent vegetative state for the past 12 years has communicated that he is not in any pain using only his brain, causing his neurologist to say the medical textbooks need to be rewritten.
Thirty-nine-year-old Canadian Scott Routley had been completely unresponsive following a car accident and, despite his parents insisting he communicated with them by lifting his thumb or moving his eyes, neurologists said routine physical assessments demonstrated he had a total lack of awareness.
However, using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique developed in 2010 by the University of Cambridge`s Medical Research Council, the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre at Addenbrooke`s hospital in Cambridge and the University of Liege, a team of neuroscientists was able to ask Routley a series of questions with yes or no answers, and receive reliable and accurate responses.
"Scott has been able to show he has a conscious, thinking mind," said Adrian Owen, who co-authored the original study and led a team investigating Routley`s case at the Brain and Mind Institute, University of Western Ontario. "We have scanned him several times and his pattern of brain activity shows he is clearly choosing to answer our questions. We believe he knows who and where he is."
Patients in a vegetative state appear "awake" and exhibit involuntary reflexes such as opening their eyes, but unlike coma patients their non-communicativeness is down to severe brain damage. Owen`s research proves this does not necessarily mean they do not have the ability to understand.
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