EEG Machine Reveals Awareness in Some Vegetative Patients

Researchers at The Brain and Mind Institute at The University of Western Ontario in Canada, in collaboration with the University of Liege in Belgium, have discovered that they can detect conscious awareness in some patients thought to be in permanent vegetative states using an inexpensive electroencephalography (EEG) device that measures electrical activity in the brain.

The use of an EEG machine, which easily can be transported to a patient’s bedside, follows an earlier breakthrough that employed a functional MRI scanner to determine whether some people in a vegetative state actually were consciously aware, but unable to physically respond to stimuli. The results of this new research have been published by The Lancet. For more information about this study, click here to read the full release.