Tag: MRI

Last month, a Brooklyn lawyer attempted to make legal history by using a lie-detection brain scan as evidence in a courtroom trial. At the time, neuroscientists raised questions about the reliability of fMRI brain scans, while legal experts were more keen on the idea of having sophisticated technology play a greater role in determining trial outcomes. Now, however, the push to allow the scans in a ...

Share The debate over patients in a vegetative state is about to get much more complex. Back in November it was revealed that a man believed to incapable of hearing, feeling, or thinking was completely conscious for 23 years while hooked up to machines that kept him alive. That isolated incident might be more common than previously thought, and there is even a chance that, one day, vegetative ...

In a story that is guaranteed to give us nightmares for a good week, the Guardian reports that a Belgian man whom doctors diagnosed as comatose 23 years ago was, in fact, conscious the entire time. Following a nearly fatal car crash in 1983, Rom Houben was believed to be in a "vegetative state," incapable of feeling or hearing anything. Three years ago, though, neurologist Steven Laureys decided ...

Sorry, that's not actually Dark Helmet, it's a researcher demonstrating the latest Brain Machine Interface (BMI) cooked up for robotics. While it's not looking too portable, it's a far nimbler setup than the original MRI Scanner first concocted by Honda to control robots in near real-time back in 2006. This time, Honda Research Institute in coordination with Advanced Telecommunications Research ...

Neurosurgery with robotic assistance is getting pretty old hat nowadays, so it looks like scientists are trying to up the difficulty factor by keeping their patients awake -- a team of French doctors just completed the first successful removal of malignant brain tumor from a still-conscious patient, using a computerized laser and an MRI scanner to guide the probe. The fiber-optic laser was fed ...