Coma victim talks via brain scanner

I just wanted to share this story I came across.

"A road accident victim, presumed by his doctors to be in a persistent vegetative state, has answered simple questions by using thought alone, neuroscientists report today. Their study could open up communication with other apparently unconscious patients through brain scanning"

Article

I find this astonishing. Imagine how this could change the nightmareish existences of some of these poor people. And with the every evolving brain-controller type hardware (like modern PC brain controllers) this could eventually a massive change in the world. Not to mention the legal aspects of it, since these people would have a voice to air their requests to be allowed to die or not, as the case may be.

Let's hope this is a technology that actually gets developed and not ignored because of costs.

It's still far away from being useful.

This only means that if someone thinks of tennis playing they say yes, and a long road ride means no....

Other wise, it's just a long terrible circumstance.

A small but sturdy step.

Even if they can choose life or death for themselves, it's still assisted suicide, and i'm not quite sure how the religious community would stand on that, since we somehow are greatly influenced by them, (don't want someone saying they want to die, then a christian fanatic killing that doctor....).

I agree with the above poster. This unknown area of human experience should have always been treated more gingerly. How wonderful that technology has opened this door.

It's like an answer to prayer. Anyone remember Terri Schiavo?


Her parents, who raised her, insisted that she was communicative, and didn't want to die. She was brain-damaged enough to not want to die, to be unable to determine to end her life, but more like a child.

I hope this new technology helps people in these tragic circumstances.

[edit on 4-2-2010 by Copperflower]

Put it this way.

His brain very well could be operating on at what we computer techies call the "BIOS".

a BIOS which every computer has, is a **basic in out system**.

it has built in functions, that can't really ever change.

It's not complex, like the actual operating system of a computer, it just contains very simple functions...for instance...

WAKEUP
EAT
PAIN
SLEEP
YES
NO

these very basic commands are hard coded into us, they never change, they always stay the same.

so, he more than likely IMO is not conscious, it's just his brain's BIOS taking in data from the machine and spewing back out pre-determined output.

In my opinion, he is not conscious.