Got a News Tip for NaturalNews? Send us your news tip, and we'll investigate!

New brain stimulation technique allows scientists to effectively measure human consciousness

Posted: August 15, 2013 |   Comments



(http://www.bloomberg.com) Researchers from the University of Milan in Italy published a study Wednesday which details a new technique to measure consciousness in the human brain.

The technique that the researchers developed involves stimulating the brain with strong magnetic pulses and then measuring how the brain responds. The equipment that they used to do this is called a trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, device.

The study was published August 14, 2013, in Science Translational Medicine.

This method was tested on 52 subjects who were either healthy or ex-coma patients who had sustained brain injuries. Testing was performed while the subjects were awake, asleep and anesthetized.

One of the study authors, Marcello Massimini, says that this technique could be useful in monitoring patients in intensive-care units who have low levels of consciousness. There currently is no objective way to measure consciousness, and much of the subject, especially when involving brain-injured patients, remains a mystery. That could soon change with this new technique, which, according to Bloomberg.com, has already "found that such patients actually had much higher levels of consciousness than subjects who were sleeping or were anesthetized."

Nicholas Schiff, Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, says that because of the current limits of measuring consciousness, misdiagnosis rates are high. In a comment accompanying the paper, he states, "Measures that can reliably distinguish vegetative states from minimally conscious states are crucial and will have an impact on clinical practice."

Have a Comment? Share it...

comments powered by Disqus