Poptech: What exactly is brain dead?

When is someone dead? If they are diagnosed as “vegetative” and only breathing through a respirator are they able to understand us? If they are paralyzed and can’t communicate, how do we know if they’re thinking? Troubling and volatile questions.

But Adrian Owen, a British neuroscientist, believes he may be on to an answer. By using fMRI technology and what we’ve learned about the brain during the last decade, he’s determined it may be as simple as asking the patient.

Here’s how he explains it: When a “normal” person is asked to think about playing tennis (swinging your arm and hitting a ball) certain areas of the brain light up on an fMRI scan. When you ask that same person to take you on a tour of their home, a completely different group of areas in the brain light up.

Owen took 25 patients who were diagnosed as “vegetative” and asked them to imagine those same same two actions while they were in an fMRI scanner. In five of the patients, the same areas of the brain lit up as did with the awake patients. Next, Owen took those five vegetative patients and asked them a series of “Yes” or “No” questions, imagining “tennis playing” for yes and “touring your home” for no. Four of those five patients answered each of the 15-20 questions – such as their father’s name or where they were born – correctly.

“We keep finding patients who aren’t what they appear to be,” Owen said.

The work could help doctors and family make key decisions. It  could also lead to new treatments, like drugs or deep brain stimulation with electrical currents, to help unconscious patients regain brain function. In addition, Dr. Owen is planning to broaden the scope of his work to include patients in deep comas, who are out cold and don’t open their eyes.

You can read more about this amazing work on the Toronto Globe & Mail website.