Comments on: Mind-reading speller allows full conversations for vegetative-state patients

By: KEN SCOTT

KEN SCOTT — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:48:52 +0000

Egad… someone in a vegetative state for years maybe… can be reached via this technologh is amazing! Yet if it were someone I loved lying there and knowing that he or she was still capable of this basic communication I think I would have nightmares of this person screaming “Help me, help me!” or worse yet “Please pull the plug and set me free”. How could any one of us live with that?

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 15:50:40 +0000

…so for this woman in the video example… can they actually have a conversation with her yet?? For example think of tennis when you want to say YES and when you answer No, think about walking around your house from room to room! Then ask her a bunch of questions and record the replies…like going through a lie detector exam of sorts… Its great they got this woman to respond, but then what happened to her?? I heard a story about a very autistic girl who was finally given a computer where she could type and they went from thinking she had almost no clue to what was going on to realizing the complete opposite that she was very intelligent and just had too much sensory overload that she had to block some out (her brain going too fast. vs. too slow). http://nhne-pulse.org/carly-fleischmann-autistic-girl-who-used-computer-to-ask-for-help/

It would be interesting to see her brain scans and see if they could put a pair of brain sunglasses on her to slow down some sensory input so she could process things better/slower to help her. This brain scanning technology is cool and interesting to watch all the ways we are reverse engineering the brain (and how far we have still to go).

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 01:51:40 +0000

Anyone know where to get the rest of the “Science of the Soul” program?

By: Spikosauropod

Spikosauropod — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 19:59:57 +0000

Very impressive! Very futuristic!

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:26:47 +0000

for any Metallica fans…. the song “One” is about this issue.

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1870

By: Gorden Russell

Gorden Russell — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 17:18:00 +0000

You’re right, Ken. This is awesome.

By: Bri

Bri — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:41:19 +0000

Now we’ll have a way to quantativly assess the levels of brain activity, and by that how aware they truly are!

By: Ken

Ken — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:19:17 +0000

Congratulations. Awesome breakthrough.

By: Mortran

Mortran — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:09:04 +0000

There seems to be a misunderstanding about what constitutes a vegetative state. A vegetative state is not a motoric disorder, this means it does not mean that the patient is unable to speak or to move.
A vegetative state is a disorder of consciousness as a result of a severe brain damage. There is no mind that could be read. These patients are not thinking at all. Some of them can even react physically to basic stimuli, but they have very limited brain activity.