[ExI] Vegetative patient free of pain

[Tomasz Rola]

(With regard to doing magick stuff to (half)(un)dead brains etc)

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/11/vegetative-patient-free-of-pain.html

Vegetative patient free of pain

13 Nov 2012 | 12:45 GMT | Posted by David Cyranoski | Category: Biology & 
Biotechnology, Health and medicine, Neuroscience 

A man thought to have been in a vegetative state for twelve years told 
doctors he is not in pain.

The patient communicated through a question-and-answer technique using 
fMRI imaging developed by University of Western Ontario’s Adrian Owen.

Owen developed the technique by asking patients diagnosed as vegetative to 
imagine doing certain common activities, such as playing tennis or walking 
through a house. These tasks produce distinct brain scans in healthy 
subjects, and the patients were shown to be produce the same results.  
Owen uses their ability to produce those distinct brain scans to ask them 
questions: for example, imagine playing tennis as a proxy for yes, walking 
through your house for no.

He confirmed the method by asking would-be vegetative state patients 
factual questions. Many were able to get them right.

Reports emerging today–of Scott Routley, a 39-year-old Canadian who had 
shown no signs of meaningful communication since a car accident 12 years 
ago–is the first example in which doctors used the technique to ask 
patients substantive questions about their own condition.

If the reports convince the medical community, it will be a triumph of the 
diagnostic technique over conventional clinical examination. It will also 
help in the care of such patients, since they could indicate pain levels 
or even convey what kind of music they wanted to hear.  Lurking in the 
background is the question that Owen still won’t ask, for lack of moral 
consensus: Do you want to die? But in the meantime, some families, like  
Routley’s, will be happily vindicated in their belief that their loved 
one is “still there.”

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **