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Articles

Good News from Neurology – But Don’t Get The Wrong Idea

Francis Fallon thinks about the difficulty of deciphering thought in the brain.

In November, news broke concerning an exciting development in neurology. Via fMRI (a brain scanning technology), a vegetative patient , who suffered serious brain damage in a car collision years ago communicated to doctors that he is not in pain. Scott Routley’s vegetative state meant he had emerged from a coma, and appeared to be awake, but he showed no signs of awareness. However, a new technique pioneered by Prof. Adrian Owen and others, at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge and the Brain and Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario, has allowed Routley to convey significant information.

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