Scan Shows Brain Activity in a Vegetative Patient

A new study reveals that patients who are left in the vegetative state may be aware of their surroundings and able to respond through their thoughts, may be hear and understand, much more than hitherto believed.

Thus patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) were generally assumed to be unconscious and unaware even though their eyes might be open. However, this assumption was proved wrong when doctors at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre in Cambridge used hi-tech brain-scanning techniques to show awareness in such a patient.

The study was conducted on a group of healthy volunteers and a 23-year-old woman who had sustained a severe brain injury in a car accident in July 2005. She had been in coma ever since, lying unresponsive in her hospital bed. In medical parlance she was in a "vegetative state."

For the purpose of the study, the woman was asked to imagine a game of tennis, as were the group of healthy volunteers. The scientists found that the same parts of the brain "lit up" in the patient and in the control group. The functional magnetic resonance imaging showed that when the scientists spoke to the woman, her brain registered activity in regions responsible for decoding language, just as the brains of normal volunteers did.

Terming the results of the study as startling, Dr Adrian Owen, of the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit said, "They confirm that, despite the diagnosis of vegetative state, this patient retained the ability to understand spoken commands and to respond to them through her brain activity, rather than through speech or movement…..her decision to work with us by imagining particular tasks when asked represents a clear act of intent, which confirmed beyond any doubt that she was consciously aware of herself and her surroundings."

All said and done, the results have to be read with caution. In other studies, 60 patients in the vegetative state showed no such brain activity. Prof. Owens said, “We know from extensive research that brain responses of this type do not occur automatically ……. require the willed, intentional action of the participant."

Nonetheless, this is an exiting medical development and needs a lot of further investigation and research to actually find out, if this is one way of communicating with some patients who may be aware, but unable to move or speak.

A spokeswoman for Headway UK, the brain injury association echoed this sentiment, “Although I'm sure we are a long way off, let us hope it is a step nearer to unlocking the mysteries of PVS, with the ultimate benefit of helping patients who have suffered PVS.”