Tennis/Home

11. 9. 2006 // // Kategorie Randnotizen 2006

I read this article in The Guardian on Friday:

“For first time, doctors communicate with patient in persistent vegetative state.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1867567,00.html

Here’s a few quoted paragraphs that give the basic story:

“A 23-year-old woman who has been in a vegetative state since suffering devastating brain damage in a traffic accident has stunned doctors by performing mental tasks for them. Brain scans revealed that the woman, who has shown no outward signs of awareness since the accident in July last year, could understand people talking to her and was able to imagine playing tennis or walking around her home when asked to by doctors.

Scientists ascertained that the woman could understand speech by playing a variety of sentences. Using the fMRI scanner, which takes snapshots of brain activity every second or two, they spotted different parts of her brain lighting up depending on which sentence she heard…

Dr Owen said: “We said to her, when you hear the word ‘tennis’, we want you to imagine being on the centre court of Wimbledon playing a big rally and every time the ball comes to you, you struggle to get it back. Then, we had a second scenario in which we wanted her to imagine going from room to room in her home.”

The two scenarios were chosen to trigger activity in different parts of her brain so they would be picked up by the scanner. While thinking about tennis, the scientists hoped to see a part of the brain called the premotor cortex, which governs limb movement, flicker into life. If she thought about walking around her flat, they expected to see a brain region called the parahippocampal gyrus, which handles mental maps of places, light up.

During the scans, the scientists said the words “tennis”, “home” or “rest” every 30 seconds and looked for changes in her brain activity. Remarkably, after each word, her brain lit up as expected, suggesting she was responding to the instructions. Further tests showed her brain activity was indistinguishable from that of healthy volunteers doing the same task.”

Something scary about the picture the article summons, of a person trapped in a body in a hospital bed, but hearing everything around them. A kind of nightmare in which, inevitably, you’d get to hear all kind of distressing conversations by other people, about themselves, about you, about your medical prognosis, all without being able to respond in any noticeable way.

Also something about the test itself. That strange way that science comes to meet the brain/consciousness. The test so speculative, so horribly simple in a way and carried out inevitably without the consent of the person. So reductive in its terms, or so functional/effective, or at least so entirely focused on what it wants to prove, to the negligence of everything else. A kind of callousness to its mode and depth of engagement with the human person lain there. Tennis. Home. Rest. Tennis. Home. Rest.

Perhaps something also in the thought of lying there, trapped, and desperately trying to do well in the ludicrous, futile task. As if doing well, showing yourself to be conscious, might somehow earn you a reprieve.

I was struck by another thought too. Of this same person still lain there weeks or months or years after this experiment is over, lain there and waiting for the words to come back, waiting for the audience to return. And, in its absence, playing privately, still treading the circle: Tennis. Home. Rest. Tennis. Home. Rest.