Brain scans of a 23-year-old woman who, in a traffic accident, sustained head injuries so severe she met the clinical criteria for a vegetative state are forcing many doctors to reconsider what they know about such patients' awareness.
In the experiment the woman was instructed to imagine playing tennis or walking around her house for 30 seconds when given the cues "tennis" or "house." Her brain activity proved identical to that of healthy subjects, suggesting that she carried out the commands. "We've come up with a method for determining that a patient is aware, where the existing clinical techniques were not able to," says Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, England, who led the study.
Owen cautions that he tested only one patient and that the results might not hold true for others, especially those with more severe injuries. Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Cornell's ...
