Learn About Every Illness Known To Man Kinds of Illness: Some of the Topics we hope to cover start with the common cold to Mesothelioma or even such sensitive subjects as Crohn. Illness Definition: "Poor health resulting from disease of body or mind; sickness." --American Heritage Dict

News: Human Vegetative State

Study Finds Patients Thought to be in "Vegetative State" Have Active Brain Activity London, England (LifeNews.com) -- A new study finds that patients who are supposedly in a "vegetative state" have active brain activity. The study includes one patient who was able to respond to basic questions with affirmative yes and no answers despite having the dehumanizing term applied to his medical condition. The new report is posted in the New England Journal of Medicine and researchers in Britain and Belgium studied 54 patients in a state of unconsciousness. Some 23 of the patients were in a so-called PVS state while the rest were listed as minimally conscious. In a 2006 version of the study with the same patients, one patient showed her brain was responding when asked questions about imaging various activities such as playing tennis or remembering her home. Those got the right areas of the brain functioning when she thought about them. In the new experiment, three other patients showed similar brain activity when asked similar questions. In one man they asked him to think of two different things -- tennis and his home -- as a way to answer yes or no by showing the appropriate brain activity in response to questions. “We asked basic biographical questions, like ‘Is your father’s name Thomas?’ and ‘Have you ever been to the United States?’" Adrian M. Owen, a neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, England, who developed the method and was a co-author of the paper, said. “We then checked whether the answers were correct. They were.” Ref. Source 6 [See Similar Topics]