5 ms·

'Vegetative' patient speaks to scientists using his brainwaves

49 points by prat 17y ago

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
Reported earlier: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1099274 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1099274 That sank without a trace - no comments, no upvotes - perhaps this report will get a better response. I think it's interesting, so I hope it does. It's a fascinating idea, getting yes/no answers from brain scans. The potential is there for using text output devices similar to those that Hawking uses, except driven by the patient imagining playing tennis.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > That sank without a trace - no comments, no upvotes - That's because it didn't mention the Ipad.
  - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
    Now it's appeared via a New Scientist link as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1100899 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1100899
- pwhelan 17y ago
  Well, I would hope the first application is to determine if the patient is in physical pain and where that pain is. Reducing suffering should be priority one. The next part I would hope would be to see if the patients can recognize voices of loved ones. I would imagine these two milestones could help patients learn to "write" to such a device, which could be automated to flag down a nurse or turn on a radio for a while or something. The real question from this though is about the patient's rights to choose. IANAL but if I understand it correctly this could cause difficult questions in consent, especially where minors are concerned.
aarongough 17y ago
If that patient is actually aware of his surroundings, then he has been trapped in a body with almost no sensory input for almost 6 years. Personally, that sounds like the worst hell imaginable. I've told everyone close to me that if I am injured badly they are to ask for 'no extreme measures' for this exact reason...
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
  - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
    Brain-damaged people can be bored. You do not need to have total facilitates in order to avoid boredom.
- aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  The "trapped in a body" thing has a name and is well-researched: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome You should consider a living will if you are serious about avoiding this.
  - aarongough 17y ago
    Good point on the living will... Up until now I have just made every person close to me promise to pull the plug if it ever came to a situation like this. I'll look into that some more...
    - dandelany 17y ago
      I don't think a verbal promise like this would legally allow anyone to pull the plug, although I don't really know. Can any lawyers comment on this?
- tel 17y ago
  It's just the opposite actually, and worse. If he's aware of his surroundings, he's been trapped for 6 years without any output instead. Able to observe and think, but unable to move, unable to speak, unable to interact with or affect his environment except as a comatose patient. Being Locked-in is one of the worst things I can imagine and yet is very real.
llimllib 17y ago
This is a much more informative link, with actual science! http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1550 http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1550
ajuc 17y ago
Great news, comminucation is the most important thing. Here is the story boy that was unable to speak or contact with world and was considered "vegetable" by doctors, till he picked up a language BLISS from a teacher that was teaching some other child in his hospital room. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvpGLxU6fVY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvpGLxU6fVY He is a poet now.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
I can't even to begin to imagine the loneliness you have to feel trapped inside your own mind like that.
pmichaud 17y ago
This story gave me goosebumps--imagine the depth of joy he felt when he was finally able to get through to someone. Blows my mind.
mckilljoy 17y ago
This whole story is really very fascinating, although a few details seem a bit odd. For example, the patient didn't answer the last question because.. he fell asleep? I would imagine if I was trapped inside my body and suddenly given a mechanism to communicate, I would be too excited to fall asleep. Did they observe any signs of excitement that I would expect a person to feel in this situation? Increased heart rate or other brain activity? Did the man try to convey his own message using the new-found communication mechanism? It almost sounds like they are communicating with some small ghost of the man's subconscious, something that can respond to basic queries and recall memories, but lacks what we would really consider a consciousness.
- pohl 17y ago
  Did the man try to convey his own message using the new-found communication mechanism? If I understand correctly, he was given the means to convey "yes" by imagining himself playing tennis. The concept of "no" was encoded by the absence of "yes". If he had wanted to send some message, like "tell my children I love them", or "I feel pain in my abdomen", how would he encode it?
  - mckilljoy 17y ago
    He certainly can't send messages as complicated as that, but if I only had one bit to flip, I would be flipping it as much as possible to get someone's attention. That said, he probably did the correct thing by simply answering their questions. That shows that "someone is home" better than flipping his bit randomly.
  - bitwize 17y ago
    "No" was encoded by imagining himself walking from room to room. The absence of anything was recorded as "no answer".
- RK 17y ago
  For example, the patient didn't answer the last question because.. he fell asleep? I would imagine if I was trapped inside my body and suddenly given a mechanism to communicate, I would be too excited to fall asleep. They probably made that assumption because people fall asleep inside MRI's all of the time, especially during extremely long fMRI tests, when they try to isolate the senses (i.e. it's very dark, you wear earplugs and ear phones). Also, the brain damage might predispose someone to have a short attention span/wakeful periods.
S_A_P 17y ago
I could imagine this becoming part of a regimen for "physical" therapy. Also makes me wonder about others who have had the plug pulled...
ghotli 17y ago
There was a book written by a man with locked-in syndrome after a stroke. It made me want to write a living will. "The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid, which took ten months (four hours a day). A transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency-ordered alphabet (E, S, A, R, I, N, T, U, L, etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and an average word took approximately two minutes. The book also chronicles everyday events for a person with locked-in syndrome." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterf...
- mckilljoy 17y ago
  So she went linearly through the whole alphabet until he found the letter he wanted? Sounds like somebody should have used a binary search! Hey-oooo!
  - albertni 17y ago
    I wonder which would actually faster - binary search on the standard ordered alphabet or going linearly in order of letter frequency. Even better - some hybrid algorithm that goes through the most common letters then goes into binary search for the remaining letters (many of which appear at approximately equal frequency)
    - mckilljoy 17y ago
      You could probably also have a tree of the ~32 most common words. At the very beginning you could have a branch to choose whether you want to pick the 'word' tree or the 'letter' tree.
    - ajuc 17y ago
      Binary search in unbalanced tree with shorter branches to more frequently used letters will be probably best (this is really huffman coding, isn't it?
  - jey 17y ago
loaristys 17y ago
This is an interesting new development in what was a couple of years ago an already observed phenomenon by half of the same team: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/5792/1402 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/5792/1402 However, I think their publishing the idea that these patients were "conscious" is morally questionable. The reasons for this are expressed far more elegantly that I could manage by Parashkev Nachev in the following response: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/sci;315/5816/1221a.pdf http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/sci;315/5816/1221a.pdf

49 points by prat 17y ago

Reported earlier: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1099274 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1099274 That sank without a trace - no comments, no upvotes - perhaps this report will get a better response. I think it's interesting, so I hope it does. It's a fascinating idea, getting yes/no answers from brain scans. The potential is there for using text output devices similar to those that Hawking uses, except driven by the patient imagining playing tennis.

jacquesm 17y ago
> That sank without a trace - no comments, no upvotes - That's because it didn't mention the Ipad.
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
  Now it's appeared via a New Scientist link as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1100899 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1100899
pwhelan 17y ago
Well, I would hope the first application is to determine if the patient is in physical pain and where that pain is. Reducing suffering should be priority one. The next part I would hope would be to see if the patients can recognize voices of loved ones. I would imagine these two milestones could help patients learn to "write" to such a device, which could be automated to flag down a nurse or turn on a radio for a while or something. The real question from this though is about the patient's rights to choose. IANAL but if I understand it correctly this could cause difficult questions in consent, especially where minors are concerned.

aarongough 17y ago

If that patient is actually aware of his surroundings, then he has been trapped in a body with almost no sensory input for almost 6 years. Personally, that sounds like the worst hell imaginable. I've told everyone close to me that if I am injured badly they are to ask for 'no extreme measures' for this exact reason...

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
- aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  Brain-damaged people can be bored. You do not need to have total facilitates in order to avoid boredom.
aaronblohowiak 17y ago
The "trapped in a body" thing has a name and is well-researched: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome You should consider a living will if you are serious about avoiding this.
- aarongough 17y ago
  Good point on the living will... Up until now I have just made every person close to me promise to pull the plug if it ever came to a situation like this. I'll look into that some more...
  - dandelany 17y ago
    I don't think a verbal promise like this would legally allow anyone to pull the plug, although I don't really know. Can any lawyers comment on this?
tel 17y ago
It's just the opposite actually, and worse. If he's aware of his surroundings, he's been trapped for 6 years without any output instead. Able to observe and think, but unable to move, unable to speak, unable to interact with or affect his environment except as a comatose patient. Being Locked-in is one of the worst things I can imagine and yet is very real.

llimllib 17y ago

This is a much more informative link, with actual science! http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1550 http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1550

ajuc 17y ago

Great news, comminucation is the most important thing. Here is the story boy that was unable to speak or contact with world and was considered "vegetable" by doctors, till he picked up a language BLISS from a teacher that was teaching some other child in his hospital room. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvpGLxU6fVY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvpGLxU6fVY He is a poet now.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

I can't even to begin to imagine the loneliness you have to feel trapped inside your own mind like that.

pmichaud 17y ago

This story gave me goosebumps--imagine the depth of joy he felt when he was finally able to get through to someone. Blows my mind.

mckilljoy 17y ago

This whole story is really very fascinating, although a few details seem a bit odd. For example, the patient didn't answer the last question because.. he fell asleep? I would imagine if I was trapped inside my body and suddenly given a mechanism to communicate, I would be too excited to fall asleep. Did they observe any signs of excitement that I would expect a person to feel in this situation? Increased heart rate or other brain activity? Did the man try to convey his own message using the new-found communication mechanism? It almost sounds like they are communicating with some small ghost of the man's subconscious, something that can respond to basic queries and recall memories, but lacks what we would really consider a consciousness.

pohl 17y ago
Did the man try to convey his own message using the new-found communication mechanism? If I understand correctly, he was given the means to convey "yes" by imagining himself playing tennis. The concept of "no" was encoded by the absence of "yes". If he had wanted to send some message, like "tell my children I love them", or "I feel pain in my abdomen", how would he encode it?
- mckilljoy 17y ago
  He certainly can't send messages as complicated as that, but if I only had one bit to flip, I would be flipping it as much as possible to get someone's attention. That said, he probably did the correct thing by simply answering their questions. That shows that "someone is home" better than flipping his bit randomly.
- bitwize 17y ago
  "No" was encoded by imagining himself walking from room to room. The absence of anything was recorded as "no answer".
RK 17y ago
For example, the patient didn't answer the last question because.. he fell asleep? I would imagine if I was trapped inside my body and suddenly given a mechanism to communicate, I would be too excited to fall asleep. They probably made that assumption because people fall asleep inside MRI's all of the time, especially during extremely long fMRI tests, when they try to isolate the senses (i.e. it's very dark, you wear earplugs and ear phones). Also, the brain damage might predispose someone to have a short attention span/wakeful periods.

S_A_P 17y ago

I could imagine this becoming part of a regimen for "physical" therapy. Also makes me wonder about others who have had the plug pulled...

ghotli 17y ago

There was a book written by a man with locked-in syndrome after a stroke. It made me want to write a living will. "The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid, which took ten months (four hours a day). A transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency-ordered alphabet (E, S, A, R, I, N, T, U, L, etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and an average word took approximately two minutes. The book also chronicles everyday events for a person with locked-in syndrome." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterf...

mckilljoy 17y ago
So she went linearly through the whole alphabet until he found the letter he wanted? Sounds like somebody should have used a binary search! Hey-oooo!
- albertni 17y ago
  I wonder which would actually faster - binary search on the standard ordered alphabet or going linearly in order of letter frequency. Even better - some hybrid algorithm that goes through the most common letters then goes into binary search for the remaining letters (many of which appear at approximately equal frequency)
  - mckilljoy 17y ago
    You could probably also have a tree of the ~32 most common words. At the very beginning you could have a branch to choose whether you want to pick the 'word' tree or the 'letter' tree.
  - ajuc 17y ago
    Binary search in unbalanced tree with shorter branches to more frequently used letters will be probably best (this is really huffman coding, isn't it?
- jey 17y ago

loaristys 17y ago

This is an interesting new development in what was a couple of years ago an already observed phenomenon by half of the same team: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/5792/1402 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/5792/1402 However, I think their publishing the idea that these patients were "conscious" is morally questionable. The reasons for this are expressed far more elegantly that I could manage by Parashkev Nachev in the following response: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/sci;315/5816/1221a.pdf http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/sci;315/5816/1221a.pdf