The study’s authors, neuroscientists Lorina Naci and Adrian Owen, put 12 healthy volunteers in an fMRI machine and showed them an 8-minute condensed version of a 1961 Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode called “Bang! You’re Dead!” while scanning their brains for reactions. The suspenseful plot depicts a little boy carrying a partially loaded gun – which he believes is just a toy – walking around his neighborhood pointing the weapon at people and pulling the trigger.
Naci and Owen found that in healthy participants, the frontal parietal brain regions – which control attention – became more active during tense moments, and that the activity built in intensity until the episode’s climax, when the boy almost hits the family maid with a real bullet. The brain activity tracked closely with the way the healthy subjects reported feeling as they watched the film, indicating a strong connection between their brain’s reaction and their emotional response.
Next, the pair put a 35-year-old man who had been unresponsive since age 17 into the machine and showed him the same film. Although he could not tell the researchers how he was feeling, the fMRI revealed nearly identical responses in his frontal parietal brain region, indicating that he was not only aware of the video, but able to follow the plot.
“The patient's brain response to the movie suggested that his conscious experience was highly similar to that of each and every healthy participant, including his moment-to-moment perception of the movie content, as well as his executive engagement with its plot," the scientists wrote.
Full Article and Source:
New Study Shows Some Vegetative Patients are Mentally Active
See Also:
Read "A Common Neural Code for Similar Conscious Experiences in Different Individuals"
4 comments:
That is exciting news. What's the next step?
This is disturbing is so many ways, to think that people could be trapped in an ongoing nightmare scenario, being captured within their own bodies is frightening and makes the whole idea of a Guardian doing as they want even more horrific.. !!
My God the next capture soul could be you, with people that have no love for you doing what ever they want and you could be there hearing it as they plot and plan, with no one hearing you scream for help..!!
This is pretty scary.
I woke up once during surgery when the anesthesia wore off. I could hear and understand everything that was going on around me, and I could see a blurry light, although I couldn't feel anything.
I remember mustering every bit of energy and strength to shout out, which came out as an almost imperceptible moan.
The doctor leaned over and gently spoke to me, then gave me more anesthesia, and everything went black.
Imagine an hour of that, or a day. Imagine a week or a month. These patients may go through a similar experience that for a year, for several years, or for decades.
Instead of leaving these patients shut in a white, hushed room, we should surround them with colors and activities and people, and see what happens.
I do not like the word "vegetative"; it's not human and we need to stop saying it.
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