"Minimally Conscious" Patient Shows
Improvement after Deep Brain Stimulation

Editor's note. A fascinating breakthrough. Drop me a line at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

A man diagnosed as in a "minimally conscious" state since 1998 improved dramatically after receiving treatment called deep brain stimulation, according to a report in the August 2 Nature. Electrodes implanted in his body act like a pacemaker to "jump-start" his brain.

The Nature report "helps hammer home the point that we have to give people with severe brain injury a chance," Dr. Douglas I. Katz, a neurorehabilitation specialist at Braintree Rehabilitation Hospital, told the Boston Globe. "Even people who don't respond should have periodic reevaluations even years after the injury, especially if family and others notice improvement," Katz added.

"My son can now eat, speak, watch a movie without falling asleep," the man's mother said in a telephone news conference, according to the Associated Press. "He can drink from a cup. He can express pain. He can cry and he can laugh.

"The most important part is he can say, 'Mommy' and 'Pop.' He can say, 'I love you, Mommy.' ... I still cry every time I see my son, but it's tears of joy."

A multi-site team led by Nicholas Schiff of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York chose this particular patient, an unidentified 38-year-old New Jersey man, for the experimental treatment due to the nature of his injuries. He was kicked in the head and beaten during a brutal mugging, but important areas of his brain were undamaged, according to the Globe.

Surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio performed the operation in 2005 to implant electrodes in thalamus area of the man's brain, "the area that helps regulate sleep and alertness," the Newark Star-Ledger reported. Wires connect the electrodes to a device in his chest that turn them on and off. Currently, the electrodes are on for 12 hours at a time.

"If you could have seen him before, you wouldn't believe it's the same person," the man's mother told the Star-Ledger. "He was in a fetal position. This procedure they did is just wonderful."

The researchers plan to use the same treatment on 11 other "minimally conscious" patients, the Star-Ledger reported.

"There will be a subset of patients who are responsive to this approach," said Schiff, according to Nature. But "not every patient in a minimally conscious state will fit this profile." However, Schiff said that neurologists do not yet know exactly which patients may benefit from the treatment.