16年間「植物状態」とされた男性がヒッチコック映画に反応：オウェン教授チームの新論文

Adrian Owen 教授チームが
16年間、植物状態とされてきたカナダの34歳の男性を含む患者らが
ヒッチコックの映画に反応したことを報告している。

映画を見ている時にfMRIで記録された脳の活動パターンは
健康な人と同じだったとのこと。

また34歳の男性患者は
「あなたは今、病院にいますか」などの質問にもYes-Noで答えた。

Man in vegetative state for 16 YEARS reacts to Hichcock film: Brain scans show patient can follow plot and react with excitement
Mail on line, September 16, 2014

元論文はこちら　↓
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/09/11/1407007111

アブストラクトは ↓

The interpretation of human consciousness from brain activity, without recourse to speech or action, is one of the most provoking and challenging frontiers of modern neuroscience. We asked whether there is a common neural code that underpins similar conscious experiences, which could be used to decode these experiences in the absence of behavior. To this end, we used richly evocative stimulation (an engaging movie) portraying real-world events to elicit a similar conscious experience in different people. Common neural correlates of conscious experience were quantified and related to measurable, quantitative and qualitative, executive components of the movie through two additional behavioral investigations. The movie’s executive demands drove synchronized brain activity across healthy participants’ frontal and parietal cortices in regions known to support executive function. Moreover, the timing of activity in these regions was predicted by participants’ highly similar qualitative experience of the movie’s moment-to-moment executive demands, suggesting that synchronization of activity across participants underpinned their similar experience. Thus we demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, that a neural index based on executive function reliably predicted every healthy individual’s similar conscious experience in response to real-world events unfolding over time. This approach provided strong evidence for the conscious experience of a brain-injured patient, who had remained entirely behaviorally nonresponsive for 16 y. The patient’s executive engagement and moment-to-moment perception of the movie content were highly similar to that of every healthy participant. These findings shed light on the common basis of human consciousness and enable the interpretation of conscious experience in the absence of behavior.