Re-visiting the Terri Schiavo issue

This might just do it:

Using a newly developed brain scan technique, researchers in the U.K. and Belgium revealed that some patients in vegetative states or states of minimal consciousness show signs of awareness, and in one exceptional case, could even answer yes/no questions posed by doctors during a visualization exercise. The findings, published online this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest that previous tests to assess patients' cognition may not fully tap into all potential aspects of awareness. The 29-year-old patient who, on brain scans exhibited responses to yes/no questions, had been in a vegetative state for five years. As one of the study's authors, Martin Monti of the Medical Research Council Cognitive and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England, summed it up to the Associated Press, "We were stunned when this happened... I find it literally amazing."

The study that yielded this neurological breakthrough included 54 patients at medical centers in Cambridge, England and Liege, Belgium, who were either in a vegetative state, or a state of minimal consciousness, as well as 16 control subjects in healthy mental condition. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, patients were asked to perform what the researchers refer to as "imagery tasks": in the first one, they were asked to imagine themselves standing on a tennis court swinging a racket; in the second, they were to imagine themselves wandering along the streets of a familiar city, or through the rooms of their homes. Of the 54 patients, the brain scans revealed that five showed clear signs of awareness during the motor activity exercise (tennis), and four of those five showed signs of awareness during the spatial task (wandering through a city). Four out of five of these patients were in a vegetative state, and all five patients had suffered traumatic brain injury—as opposed to suffering oxygen starvation, (as had been the case with controversial vegetative patient Terri Schiavo).

Interesting how Terri Schiavo is mentioned but in a dismissive way... as if the study isn't countering what has largely been dismissed by the elite in the first place.

It's an eye-opening piece... that ought to give us all pause.

Ought to.

Crossposted(*).

Comments

[chuck aka xtnyoda]

In my position I have dealt with many over the years who have been clinically comatose and their families.

I've seen several, later wake up... and recall conversations had around the bed.

Had one young lady that I had never met before her tragic event and resulting coma... visited with her in the hospital for several days... talked to her... prayed with her... stuff like that. She had family in our church is how I knew of her.

Walked in one day with a friend who had never met her and I was telling him about her condition... she was sitting up on the edge of the bed!

I told her my name... she assured me that she knew exactly who I was and she thanked me for coming and talking with her... and not giving up. She went home a few days later.

That's just one... there are others.