There are a variety of brain scanners that are currently being developed in the pipeline or are currently manufactured by small and large international biotech companies with the goal of producing the best brain interfaces available to allow ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), spinal cord injury patients and even minimally concious vegetative patients to communicate with their loved ones.
Indeed, the boundaries of the field of brain interface are being pushed even more to help determine the level of consciousness in vegetative patients. New research published in The Lancet shows that using a simple portable EEG brain scanner convincingly showed that a subset of vegetative patients produce conscious brain activity even though they had been properly diagnosed as being unconscious or minimally conscious. In brief, the team of scientists lead by Dr. Adrian Owen from the University of Cambridge in England, showed that one can successfully record brain activity from different areas of the brain and analyze the conscious behavior of patients using a novel EEG task involving motor imagery. In other words, the vegetative patients received audio recorded instructions and had to imagine moving certain parts of their body such as clenching their fist, wiggling their toes or simply imagine walking throughout the rooms of their house.
How do the scientists know that the resulting EEG patterns reflect conscious behavior? The data collected showed that about 25% of patients (16 vegetative patients) produced similar EEG patterns recorded from the premotor and motor cortical areas of the brain in a very similar manner as seen in healthy control patients. Also, the three vegetative patients that produced EEG patterns through motor imagery consistently generated brain activity after a certain beep and the specific pattern brain activity associated with motor imagery stopped after a second beep instructed them to do so. This results showed that none of the results were due to random EEG activity or chance. Interestingly, 75% of healthy individuals were able to produce EEG activity through motor imagery which means that about 25% of healthy people are not capable of imagining moving parts of their body. Therefore, the lack of EEG activity in a vegetative patient does not rule out conscious behavior.
Overall, this is groundbreaking research can greatly benefit vegetative patients and lead to the development of user-friendly and "cheap" brain-computer interfaces that can allow family members to communicate with brain trauma or vegetative patients. Although it provides better resolution, this means that fMRI scans may be substituted by simple EEG machines as a diagnostic tool for diagnosing concious behavior in vegetative patients. Carneggie Mellon University is one of the few academic research institutions in the country that are leaders in producing innovative brain interface products to help quadriplegic patients to communicate using simple eye trackers and brain computer interfaces. At the Society for Neuroscience that took place in Washington D.C. last week (Nov 12-16), many small companies currently sell cheap electrode caps hooked to data acquisition systems that can measure EEG patterns for basic and clinical research. Some of these new EEG and motor imagery products include the g.EEGcap from gtec, an emerging brain computer interface company with major branches in Spain and Austria.
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