Brain Scans to Communicate with Brain Damaged

You can read an interesting article about using brain scans to communicate with those who have brain damage severe enough to limit their normal speaking/moving abilities. Apparently researchers may be able to instruct a minimally conscious person to imagine something and they can view a real time brain scan to see the resulting effect. When a specific area in the brain is activated they then know whether that person responded in the affirmative or the negative. This would allow scientists to communicate with a brain damaged individual that would normally be impossible to do.

"To signal yes, they were instructed to imagine playing a game of tennis, which would activate a part of the brain called the premotor cortex, which governs limb movement. To signal no, they were instructed to imagine walking through a familiar environment, such as their home, which would activate a part of the brain called the parahippocampal gyrus, which handles spatial navigation."

I think this ability is the result of better and cheaper brain scanning technology now available that allows reasearchers to view brain activation in real time. This would build on previous research where scientists were able to communicate with a person in a vegetative state.

A patient in a vegetative state can communicate just through using her thoughts, according to research. A UK/Belgium team studied a 23-year-old woman who had suffered a severe brain injury in a road accident, which left her apparently unable to communicate. By scanning her brain, they discovered she could understand spoken commands and even imagine playing tennis

This would certainly bring up a lot of ethical questions.

"What if you ask a patient, 'Do you want to discontinue your treatment?' and the brain says yes? How are you going to use that in a court of law? How are you going to use that to make decisions?

How would this change the dynamics of how these people are treated? There are many interesting questions that would have to be dealt with from that perspective. Ideally, a better understanding of these vegetative states will eventually allow scientists to repair and restore brain damage back to a normal state.