The study’s authors, neuroscientists Lorina Naci and Adrian Owen, put 12 healthy volunteers in an fMRI machine and showed them an 8-minute condensed version of a 1961 Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode called “Bang! You’re Dead!” while scanning their brains for reactions. The suspenseful plot depicts a little boy carrying a partially loaded gun – which he believes is just a toy – walking around his neighborhood pointing the weapon at people and pulling the trigger.
Naci and Owen found that in healthy participants, the frontal parietal brain regions – which control attention – became more active during tense moments, and that the activity built in intensity until the episode’s climax, when the boy almost hits the family maid with a real bullet. The brain activity tracked closely with the way the healthy subjects reported feeling as they watched the film, indicating a strong connection between their brain’s reaction and their emotional response.
Next, the pair put a 35-year-old man who had been unresponsive since age 17 into the machine and showed him the same film. Although he could not tell the researchers how he was feeling, the fMRI revealed nearly identical responses in his frontal parietal brain region, indicating that he was not only aware of the video, but able to follow the plot.
“The patient's brain response to the movie suggested that his conscious experience was highly similar to that of each and every healthy participant, including his moment-to-moment perception of the movie content, as well as his executive engagement with its plot," the scientists wrote.
Full Article and Source:
New Study Shows Some Vegetative Patients are Mentally Active
See Also:
Read "A Common Neural Code for Similar Conscious Experiences in Different Individuals"