persistent vegetative state
oracknows | February 20, 2010The news is finally filtering out to the rest of the world. As I pointed out a few days ago Dr. Steven Laureys admitted that Rom Houben, the unfortunate victim of a car crash that left him in what had been diagnosed as a persistent vegetative state, was in fact not able to communicate through the woo known as facilitated communication. This came as no surprise to anyone who has followed FC over the years. In fact, what had come as a surprise is that Dr. Laureys could have been so easily taken in by pseudoscience that had been so thoroughly debunked in the 1990s. To his credit, though, after a…
purepedantry | March 6, 2009I caught this story (with an accompanying video) over at Mind Hacks and Neuron Culture about this poor woman from the UK who fell unconscious from a viral infection in her brain stem. Using fMRI, a doctor at Cambridge named Adrian Owen showed that she still had residual brain functions such as response to light. The woman has since recovered from her condition and can interact, though she still faces substantial impairment.
The thing is that people are continuing to use the term persistent vegetative state to describe her condition. I think this is misusing the term. A better description…
ddobbs | March 6, 2009FromMind Hacks:
We've reported before on brain imaging research that shows brain activity in those in a 'persistent vegetative state'. What I didn't know until today was that one subject in this research, Kate, has since woken up. This YouTube video tells Kate's story:
Sometimes firm ground proves to be slippery.