New hope for locked-in patients

“Complete locked-in syndrome” is a terrifying form of paralysis, in which the patient remains mentally aware but is incapable of moving any part of their body – not even their eyes, as in the more
common “locked-in syndrome”. Kept alive with feeding tubes and ventilators, they have no way of communicating with the outside world. But now, an experimental study has found that there is a way of reaching at least some of these patients. Researchers at Germany’s University of Tübingen developed a cap that uses infrared light to detect variations in blood flow to different parts of the brain. In tests, four completely locked-in patients wore these caps while the team asked them
simple closed questions – e.g. is Berlin the capital of France? – as a computer assessed the differ ent blood oxygenation patterns produced in their brains as they thought “yes”, or “no”. After finding they could detect the patients’ answers correctly 70% of the time, the researchers asked them personal questions (repeating each one multiple times, for a more reliable result). The daughter of one patient asked him if she should marry her boyfriend: nine out of ten times, the answer was “no” (they
married anyway). The scientists also asked the subjects, all of whom lived at home, if they were happy: perhaps surprisingly, they all indicated they were. It was a very small study, and it isn’t clear if the technique would work on all patients. But the team described it as a heartening breakthrough.