Pioneer brain implants allow minimally conscious patient to eat, drink and talk
Ian Sample, Guardian, Thursday August 2 2007
A man who spent more than six years in a near-vegetative state after a horrific assault has made a dramatic recovery following a pioneering treatment to stimulate his brain with electrical pulses.
The man, who was confined to a bed in a specialised nursing home, very rarely opened his eyes, occasionally tried to mouth words and move his head, but was otherwise unable to communicate and had to be fed through a tube. Following the new treatment the patient, who cannot be named, is able to recognise and talk to his doctors and family, eat and drink normally and perform basic movements, such as brushing his hair.
It is the first time the technique, called deep brain stimulation, has been used to treat a patient in what neuroscientists refer to as a minimally conscious state…
In August 2005, a team of doctors from three hospitals in the US asked the family if they wished their son to join an experimental study to test the new technique, which involves implanting 1mm-wide electrodes into the two regions of the brain closely linked to consciousness. The technique is already used to stimulate other areas of the brain to control tremors in people with Parkinson’s disease. Several trials are under way to test its effectiveness at treating severe depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and epilepsy.