Portable Bedside EEG Can Detect Consciousness in Those Otherwise Thought to be Vegetative
EEG A new EEG-based method can detect signs of consciousness in people thought to be in permanent vegetative states. Csaba Segesvári via Wikimedia What constitutes consciousness--not in the philosophical sense, but clinically speaking--has been a matter of great debate in scientific circles lately, particularly as new technological applications allow neuroscientists to peek deeper into the brains of those thought to be in vegetative states. Now, a cheap and portable EEG device has been developed that has detected signs of consciousness in three people previously thought to be in vegetative states. The same team that shook up the established line of thinking back in 2005 by using functional MRI to show consciousness in a person thought to be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) has now shown that relatively inexpensive electroencephalogram (EEG) can do the same thing. The wide availability and low cost of EEG--which uses electrodes placed on the scalp to sense...