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HEADLINE

Brain activity of patient in vegetative state responds to instructions.

METHOD

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was used to measure neural responses in a vegetative state patient and 12 healthy control participants. Experiment 1: participants were presented with spoken sentences (e.g. “there was milk and sugar in his coffee”). Experiment 2: participants were instructed to imagine either visiting different rooms in a house or playing tennis at different points during the scan.

RESULT

Experiment 1: speech-specific neural activity (in bilateral middle and superior temporal gyri regions) was observed in both the vegetative state patient and controls (no difference). Experiment 2: brain activity specifically corresponding to the mental imagery tasks was observed in the patient (tennis task: supplementary motor area; spatial navigation task: parahippocampal gyrus, posterior parietal cortex and lateral premotor cortex). Again these results were indistinguishable from those of controls.

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