The protagonist of this story is 35 years old, and had been in a vegetative state for 15 years due to a severe blow to the head suffered in a traffic accident. He has spent all this time bedridden in a hospital, not responding to stimuli.
Now, a treatment carried out at the Pierre Wertheimer Neurological Hospital in Lyon (France), has achieved that this patient responds to simple commands such as following the movement of an object with his eyes, and that he shows certain signs of consciousness. How has it been possible?
The best stimulant
French neurosurgeons implanted an electrical device that stimulates the vagus nerve into the man’s chest. This system has long been used to treat people with depression or epilepsy who do not respond to other therapies, but it had not been used until now in individuals in a vegetative state, a situation in which only reflex motor responses are observed, without voluntary interaction with the environment.
Why the vagus nerve? This set of nerve fibers is one of the most important in the body. It connects the brain with other organs, including the stomach, pancreas, and liver, and is known to play an important role in the waking state. For this reason, the researchers at the French center decided to stimulate it, to see if it could help to get the patient out of his situation. And it worked. Or so it seems.
Test passed
The medical team led by Angela Sirigu, from the Marc Jeannerod Institute of Cognitive Sciences in Lyon, chose this person for the test because they were looking for an individual who had been in a vegetative state for more than a decade and without giving any indication of improvement, so that the Possible positive results could not be attributed to chance (it should be remembered that there are documented cases of individuals recovering unexpectedly).
After a month of vagus nerve stimulation, the man began to show signs of life. Those responsible for the experiment say that their attention, movements and brain activity increased significantly. He began to respond to simple commands, such as following objects with his eyes or turning his head when asked. The patient’s mother claims that her son stays awake when books are read to him, something that did not happen before.
Researchers have observed other responses. When they put their face very close to that of the man, he opens his eyes and reacts as if he were surprised. EEGs have also given hopeful signs. Brain activity has increased significantly in areas related to movement and wakefulness. And a positron emission tomography scan showed more metabolic activity in the cortical and subcortical regions of the brain.
Are you truly awake?
No one knows for sure, despite the patient’s reactions to certain stimuli. According to Angela Sirigu, “brain recovery is possible when all hopes seem in vain.” However, other scientists are skeptical of this research , just published in the journal Current Biology.
Sirigu and his colleagues believe that their work shows that improvements can be achieved even in very severe cases of lack of consciousness, and they are already planning a large study in collaboration with different medical institutions, with the aim of exploring the therapeutic efficacy of nerve stimulation vague in people in a more or less deep vegetative state.
