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Brain zap rouses people from years of vegetative state
TALK about an awakening. People who have been in a minimally conscious state for weeks or years have been temporarily roused using mild electrical stimulation.
Soon after it was applied to their brains, 15 people with severe brain damage showed signs of consciousness, including moving their hands or following instructions using their eyes. Two people were even able to answer questions for 2 hours before drifting back into their previous uncommunicative state.
"I don't want to give people false hope – these people weren't getting up and walking around – but it shows there is potential for the brain to recover functionality, even several years after damage," says Steven Laureys at the University of Liège in Belgium, who led the research.
People with severe brain trauma often fall into a coma. If they "awaken", by showing signs of arousal but not awareness, they are said to be in a vegetative state. This can improve to a state of minimal consciousness, where they might show fluctuating signs of awareness, which come and go, but have no ability to communicate.
External stimulation of the brain has been shown to increase arousal, awareness and aspects of cognition in healthy people. So Laureys and his colleagues wondered if it would do the same in people with severe brain damage. They used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which doesn't directly excite the brain, but uses low-level electrical stimulation to make neurons more or less likely to fire.
The team worked with 55 people who had experienced a traumatic brain injury or lack of oxygen to the brain and were in a minimally conscious or vegetative state. They placed electrodes over their left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – an area involved in memory, decision-making and awareness. Then they delivered 20 minutes of stimulation to some of the people and a sham treatment to the others. The next day, the two groups received the opposite therapy.
During brain stimulation, 13 people with minimal consciousness and two people in a vegetative state showed signs of awareness that were observed neither before the stimulation nor after the sham treatment.
For most of these people the changes were moderate, but some recovered the ability to communicate, says Laureys. "Two patients emerged from a minimally conscious state altogether." When asked questions such as "Am I touching my nose?", they were able to answer by nodding their head or making specific eye movements.
Others were able to respond to simple commands to nod, or squeeze their hand. All the effects lasted for about 2 hours. The findings will be published in the journal Neurology.
For some patients, it was only weeks since their trauma had happened, but others had been minimally conscious for years. This is important, says Laureys. "There's this dogma that if you don't see a change in 12 months you will never see it. This research challenges that."
"This is a very important study," says Tristan Bekinschtein, who studies consciousness at the University of Cambridge. If this treatment becomes a standard practice, he says, it will reveal a lot about how different brain networks become reactivated after severe head trauma.
It's not clear exactly how the treatment works, but it is likely that the stimulation pushes previously suppressed brain activity over a threshold. This possibly enhances processes that are involved in attention and working memory and underlie conscious tasks such as decision-making and moving.
John Whyte, director of the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, says that tDCS might be used both as a treatment in its own right, and for screening people to diagnose their state and assess what treatment they might respond to. "This research is of considerable interest as it suggests another potential treatment avenue," he says. "First, we need to determine whether these short-term effects can be amplified and made more durable."
Laureys's team is now doing just that – assessing the potential for more lasting arousal. The brain can be stimulated for longer periods of time as there seem to be no side effects, just a little tingling, Laureys says. Trials involving a full week of stimulation are under way. They also involve stimulating other areas of the brain. The results are not yet available.
This isn't the first time that medical interventions have aroused a silent brain. In 1999, Louis Viljoen – who had been in a persistent vegetative state for three years – began to make erratic movements at night. His doctors prescribed zolpidem, a sedative used to treat insomnia. Within minutes of being given the drug by his mother, Viljoen turned his head and said "hello mummy". The effect lasted a few hours. The drug now allows him to communicate for about 10 hours a day. Such a response is rare. Laureys's team found that zolpidem had no significant effect on any of 60 patients with brain damage
Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129582.700-brain-zap-rouses-people-from-years-of-vegetative-state.html#.Uw8M_-N_s1I
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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