Patients in a Vegetative State May Understand More than We Think

According to a recent study conducted by Adrian Owen, a young British neuroscientist, some patients in a vegetative state recognize their loved ones’ photographs, comprehend speech, and are able to perform complex mental tasks on command.

Here are more details on this issue from Jerome Groopman, Silent Minds, newyorker.com, Oct. 15, 2007.

Owen heard about a patient *** named Kate Bainbridge, a twenty-six-year-old schoolteacher who had become comatose after a flulike illness, and was eventually diagnosed as being in what neurologists call a vegetative state.***

Whenever pictures of Bainbridge’s family flashed on the screen, an area of her brain called the fusiform gyrus, which neuroscientists had identified as playing a central role in face recognition, lit up on the scan.***

The patients’ brains were scanned while they listened to a recording of simple sentences interspersed with meaningless “noise sounds.” The scans of some of the patients showed the same response to the sentences as scans of healthy volunteers[.]***

Owen’s final experiment was the most ambitious: a test to determine whether vegetative patients who seemed able to comprehend speech could also perform a complex mental task on command. He decided to ask them to imagine playing tennis.***

The woman had to be able to hear and understand Owen’s instructions, retrieve a memory of tennis—including a conception of forehand and backhand and how the ball and the racquet meet—and focus her attention for at least thirty seconds. To Owen’s astonishment, she passed the test.***

Special thanks to Neil E. Hendershot, Esq. (Attorney at law, Goldberg Katzman, P.C., Adjunct Professor, Widener University School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.

You can read more on this issue on Neil’s blog at PA Elder, Estate & Fiduciary Law Blog.