Awareness May Remain After Severe Brain Injury

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS) -- those with severe brain damage who demonstrate intermittent awareness of their environment -- may retain some degree of cognitive function, even though they can't follow simple instructions or communicate, the findings from a small study suggest.

Using a special type of "functional" MRI scan, researchers found that such patients exhibit brain responses to speech similar to those seen in healthy individuals. The findings appear in the medical journal Neurology

"These findings raise important questions related to whether MCS patients have a greater capacity to experience subjective states but also to benefit from therapeutic interventions," Dr. Joy Hirsch, at Columbia University in New York, and her colleagues suggest in their report.

Hirsch's group performed functional MRI on two brain-injured patients in a minimally conscious state and on seven healthy subjects as they listened to narratives by family members. Functional MRI was also performed while the subjects' hands were touched.

"The MCS patients studied here showed remarkably similar brain activity to that evoked in healthy control subjects," the authors report.

"In our subjects, the resting MCS brain preserves an ability to recruit (nerve) networks necessary for cognition and interaction," Hirsch's group reports. This possibility "presents a humanitarian imperative to further investigate the state of consciousness of these and other brain-injured patients."

Unfortunately, I'm finding that we're not at the beginning of the slippery slope, but way down at the bottom. We may have even fallen off the slope. The euthanasiasts have been running things for quite a while, and my guess is that with Terri and the internet, the rest of us are just now beginning to catch on.

There have been other cases similar to Terri's for years now, and I never heard of them until after I learned about Terri some 18 months ago. Thank God for the Internet! May it's use for good always be stronger than it's use for evil.

pc93 reporting!

FOR LOCAL AND NON-LOCAL (GLOBAL) DISTRIBUTION:

Here is the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Life Ribbon Desktop Logo with instructions on how to get it on your screen. Also contains an exhortation to the Florida House Representatives and Senators of the FL Senate as well as contact numbers of officials to call, including links to The Empire Journal, terrisfight.org and Free Republic, etc.:

http://www.enlightenment-engine.net/eeng/ribbon/terriliferibbondesktoplogo.zip

Here is a flyer for Terri that can be printed out and distributed:

http://www.enlightenment-engine.net/eeng/ribbon/terriflyer.pdf

Here is html code if you have a webpage and would like to participate in the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Life Ribbon Campaign besides the above of having a Terri Life Ribbon on your own computer:

Copy and paste the following text into your HTML web page code where you want the Terri Schindler Life Ribbon banner to appear:

Join the Terri Schindler Life Ribbon Campaign!

If instead you simply want to have the Terri Schindler Life Ribbon appearing on your web page then use this code:

Terri Schindler Life Ribbon Campaign

Terri Schindler-Schiavo Life Ribbon Campaign:

Google -> Life Ribbon

or:

http://bellsouthpwp.net/p/c/pc93/terri_schindler_life_ribbon_campaign.htm

Juan V Schoch - Lake Mary, FL
Concerned Florida Resident / United States Citizen who believes Terri should be provided protection, removed from out of the hands of those trying to kill her via substituted (hearsay) wishes, and who believes she should be placed back on the road to her recovery via rehabilitation and therapy, etc. as well as into the hands of her loved ones, etc.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1333205/posts

Florida House Could Impeach Schiavo Judge

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1342344/posts?page=1#1

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