‘Locked-in’ people show signs of awareness when faced with sums

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28789-locked-in-people-show-signs-of-awareness-when-faced-with-sums

by mileskjeller • 11 years ago

72 6 11 years ago

rbanffy• 11 years ago

This technique can be used to operate a speech synthesis device. It would then but possible to more completely evaluate the patients.

sb23• 11 years ago

Could this also be used to ask them yes or no questions? I wonder if that would be helpful or not. Perhaps "would you like us to pull the plug?"

vlasev• 11 years ago

Something like, count to 10 on the "yes" screen if your answer is "yes" or count to 10 on the "no" screen and so on.

aaron695• 11 years ago

Given facilitated communications, I'd give this a BS until proven otherwise.

“The patients’ families were very happy when they found out that the patient could do maths”

A Chinese study in New Scientist where they admit to giving the family false hope, a lot of alarm bells.

pervycreeper• 11 years ago

Facilitated communication is an obvious scam, built on complete nonsense, with no empirical support. This is completely different.

irremediable• 11 years ago

I'm sceptical, because some people in (what was presumed to be) a vegetative state also showed those "signs of awareness". Not read the paper yet, though.

‘Locked-in’ people show signs of awareness when faced with sums

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