NIA Public Domain Sketch

The play Wings by Arthur Kopit gave many of us pause regarding the assumed level of communicative awareness of stroke and or comatose patients and how one might reach them. We've long been dependent on external physical indicators of response to our attempts to communicate. For those who were semi or unconscious, that was not an option.

According to Fergus Walsh, Medical correspondent for BBC News "Scientists have been able to reach into the mind of a brain-damaged man and communicate with his thoughts. The British scientists said they could communicate with a patient who has not shown any sign of outward consciousness for five years. They used a new brain scanning technique to 'talk' to the 29 year old Belgian man who damaged his brain in a car accident and has been classified as being in a vegetative state. The patient was able to communicate "yes" and "no" using just his thoughts during a research conducted by a team from Cambridge University. Dr Adrian Owen, who led the team and co-authored of the research article said "this is a rare case...This changes things". The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. For the full BBC article, go to:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8497148.stm