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Patient Revives After 19 Years By Rewiring Brain
dylanduck writes "A study of the recovery of a man who spent 19 years in a minimally conscious state has revealed the likely cause of his regained consciousness - his brain rewired itself around the injured areas into totally novel structures. It suggests the human brain shows far greater potential for recovery and regeneration then ever suspected." From the article: "There were ... significant changes between scans taken just two months after the recovery, and the most recent, at 18 months. Some of the new pathways had receded again, while others seem to have strengthened and taken over as Wallis continued to improve."
19 years seems like a pretty long time to keep someone laying around in a hospital bed.
Is it simply because he was not FULLY DEAD that they did not pull the plug?
What exactly is considered "minimally conscious"?
Did he look really tired all the time?
of the scans they performed to determine this. It'd be interesting to know exactly which structures were bypassed.
Why?
Well, being a university student in both psychology and linguistics gives me a certain....shall we say, schizophrenic view of language and the brain.
On the linguistics side, we have people who claim that Broca and Wernicke's areas constitute, from birth, a specialized language acquisition device, which requires only minimal input to intuit, from innate knowledge and ambient language, the grammatically correct structure of one's native tongue.
On the psych side, I seem to lean much more towards the connectionist viewpoint: ie, nothing is innate; reccurent patterns strengthen connections in a hebbian fashion, and theoretically any sort of neural network for problem solving is possible. Yes, the brain does seem to develop in fairly regular ways, but who's to say that's not because of similar inputs across the human population? We do, after all, share the same earth...
The patient did not speak for years, and then suddenly found it possible to do so nineteen years later - was there damage to the primary speech areas? If so, what rerouting made it possible for him to speak? Doesn't any rerouting (particularly if it does not lead to violations of principals of "Universal Grammar") give the lie to a strict Chomskyan viewpoint?
Neurology is utterly, utterly fascinating. It saddens me greatly that I haven't the training in biology to be useful at all in it.
...there was that well known case of Terry Shiavo (sp?), the young woman who was, like this gentleman, in what many people called a "persistent vegetative state".
Is it simply because he was not FULLY DEAD that they did not pull the plug?
Well, that COULD be a reason, though in both cases there was technically no plug to pull. They weren't on life support, so if there was a plug to pull it was on their feeding machines. Anyways, how "dead" you are is only one factor. The other is consent. If you have not made up a "living will"--some kind of legal document instructing doctors on how much effort to put into keeping you alive--then it is up to your next of kin as to how to care for you if you are unable to speak for yourself. Shiavo was kept alive for a very long time as her husband and her parents fueded over what they thought was the right thing to do. If she was not married, or her husband deferred the decision to her parents, then she'd still be lying in bed, minimally conscious and on a feeding tube.
It certainly seems like a horrible existence to me, and if the thought of living that way yourself is intolerable then you really should make up a living will document of some kind--I think it is the only easy way you can give a doctor the option to cease treatment on you from an ethical standpoint. I think the only thing more pathetic than having to live in a "permanently vegetative state" is seeing lawyers making a living off the situation as next of kin prolong their own pain. If only for that reason I'm thinking of a living will option.
That said, I personally know a couple people that have been seriously maimed or declared terminal and survived because of agressive, prolonged treatment my doctors that some people might object to. Now there is this case of a man who was declared by experts to be in a permanent minimally-conscious state waking up after 19 years. Makes me wonder if letting treatment continue wouldn't be such a bad idea. What if you got a second chance to live? I'm sure the implications of this case on brain injury research will be astounding. Does someone in a "minimally concious" or "permanently vegetative" state actually feel pain or discomfort? Are they even aware enough of their situation to know they are suffering? Would there ever be a chance Shiavo could've recovered like this man did? What physiological mechanism triggered the brain to completely re-wire itself when so many others never recover?
Perhaps that is an option for people to think of in a "living will"--if you find yourself in a minimally-conscious or vegetative state you could instruct that you be kept alive in the interests of scientific research into brain injury recovery. You could even instruct that some of your estate be given to fund such research at the same time. Sounds somewhat gruesome but many people still think the same thing of donating yhour body to be a cadaver in a junior anatomy class, or even having your organs harvested. If you get past such thoughts you could really be helping out others in the future.
For Bush and the right wing.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
You tell your version, and I'll tell mine. geeze, people - get a life.
Indeed you should have modded down, but slashbot moderators are just as immature it seems. I don't mind critisism levied IAW reasoned debate, but you simply shot out an insult without any support. FYI, both sides had medical experts on thier side. Its a shame Shiavo's family claims didn't get the same attention from the media that her husband did. In fact, a priest who was present with Terri during her last days had this to say about her: "I will never forget my hours with Terri, both before and after her feeding tube was removed. She responded to me, and she responded to others who visited her. She laughed, she tried to speak, she returned her parents' kisses, she followed us with her eyes, she closed her eyes when I prayed with her and opened them when we were finished. Medical examiners can offer their conclusions because of what they saw, but none of that changes what we saw. But both we and the medical examiners were looking in from the outside. Any honest medical expert will admit that there is so much about the human brain we still don't know." Now that hardly sounds like PVS to me. So who am I supposed to believe? The guy who's paying out settlement money to continue her medical care, or the medical staff who probably wanted her organs, or the priest and family who supposedly have Terri's best interests at heart?