[Source: WSJ Health Blog, Jacob Goldstein]
A 38-year-old man who had been in a coma-like state for eight years regained consciousness after doctors stuck electrodes deep into his brain and flipped the switch, according to a letter published in the journal Nature
Just hours after the treatment with electrical pulses began last year, the unnamed man opened his eyes and began tracking movement in his room. Over the following months, he regained the ability to speak in short sentences, drink from a cup and comb his hair, the Los Angeles Times reports. “Now he can cry and laugh and say ‘Mommy’ and ‘Pop,’ ” his mother said at a news conference.
The man was severely injured during a mugging, when he was repeatedly kicked in the head. He was left in a minimally conscious state, in which a patient shows occasional signs of awareness but can’t communicate.
In the technique, known as deep brain stimulation and sometimes used on Parkinson’s patients, electrodes are inserted into the thalamus, which controls arousal. Doctors hope this case will be the first in a series of 12 patients to test whether the results can be reproduced. They chose the patient because they believed the arousal system in his thalamus was damaged, but that key areas of the cerebral cortex were undamaged.
