Breakthrough Study That Found Consciousness In Vegetative Patients Was Flawed
Electroencephalography, or EEG Petter Kallioinen via WikimediaA reanalysis by a second research group suggests a 2011 study that used EEG to detect consciousness in three vegetative patients was fooled by randomness. In late 2011, a University of Western Ontario study rocked the neuroscience community by reporting that inexpensive and portable handheld electroencephalogram (EEG) scanners had detected signs of consciousness in three people thought to be in persistent vegetative states. Now a team of researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College (that's Cornell University's medical school in NYC) is saying "not so fast." In this week's issue of the journal Lancet, the Weill Cornell team says the study suffers from statistical errors. More to the point, the Western Ontario researchers misinterpreted noise in the data. In the original study, researchers took EEG readings of 16 patients in persistent vegetative states while asking them to perform simple physical tasks, like wiggling their toes. Of...