Brain-damaged patients ‘communicate with thoughts’

Coma patients could be aware of their surroundings and may be capable of communicating using their thoughts, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Liege and scientists based at Cambridge University’s cognition and brain sciences unit, part of the Medical Research Council, studied the brain activity of 54 patients in a vegetative state using magnetic resonance imaging technology.

They concluded that five patients showed signs of awareness after scans revealed they were responding to verbal instructions designed to stimulate different parts of the brain.

One patient, a 29-year-old man who had suffered a severe brain injury in a road traffic accident, was able to apply this imagery technique to answer simple yes-or-no questions.

Dr Adrian Owen of the Medical Research Council said that the scientists were “astonished” with the outcome.

“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,” he added.