A curious news article in the NY Times focus on a set of
neuropsychological tests and MRI of the brain of former
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon who starting in 2005
started to have a number of strokes which had left him in
a vaguely diagnosed state, that is, he appears to be in a
"minimally conscious" state but not all sources agree on
this. What might make the Times article of interest to Tips
is the finding that when Sharon was presented with
personally meaningful stimuli, there was measurable brain
activity in what has been described as "proper parts" or
"appropriate parts" of the brain. What this all means is
unclear though but different people appear to be making
different interpretation of these results. Let me identify
some relevant websites; first, the NY Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/world/middleeast/ariel-sharon-brain-scan-shows-response-to-stimuli.html?_r=0
Wikipedia has a longish entry on Sharon with a section on
his strokes and related health problems including a brief
mention of the testing reported in the Times article; see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_sharon#First_stroke
What makes this of particular relevance to Tips is that the
neuropsychological testing was conducted by a
psychologist from UCLA, Martin Monti. Here is his
faculty page on the UCLA website and I mention without
comment that he received his Ph.D. in 2007; see:
http://www.psych.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty_page?id=187&area=3
It should not come as a surprise that Monti, like other
psychologists, is actively promoting his research as evidenced
by his "Monti Lab" website; see:
https://montilab.psych.ucla.edu/
Even UCLA put out a press release on Monti's testing with
Sharon which is available here:
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/tests-conducted-on-israel-s-ariel-243010.aspx
Now, I don't consider myself a neuroscientist even though I have
taught physiological/biological psychology courses and teach sensation
and perception with a biological bias, so I don't fully appreciate what
it is that Monti & Co have actually shown. However, I think the
following quote from the release might be important:
|"Information from the external world is being transferred to the
|appropriate parts of Mr. Sharon's brain. However, the evidence
|does not as clearly indicate whether Mr. Sharon is consciously
|perceiving this information," Monti said. "We found faint brain
|activity indicating that he was complying with the tasks. He may
|be minimally conscious, but the results were weak and should be
|interpreted with caution."
This seems to suggest that stimulus information appears to activate
some brain areas but whether (a) this is the same type of processing
"normal" brains engage in, and (b) whether this processing is
"preconscious" or "conscious".
Unless a case study is published of this case, it is likely that we
will never really know -- privacy issues may prevent such a study
to be written and published.
An aside: I could be wrong but EEG analysis seems to provide
similar if not more detailed information; for example, see:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1388245711002410
Though the NY Times have reported on this, it should be noted
that the Israeli media has also reported on it, such as this brief
statement: see:
http://www.jerusalemonline.com/israel-news/archive/27.01.2013-news-from-israel
NOTE: the text below the video is a transcript of the video.
And the following which covers more ground; see:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4337599,00.html
I find one part of this article somewhat troubling and I quote it
here:
|Sharon's former aide, Raanan Gissin, said over the weekend
|that the brain scans appeared to give a glimmer of hope for
|some improvement in the former premier's condition. "The test
|was routine, but the results not entirely so," Gissin said. "There
|was some kind of positive indication."
A research lit searches show that people in a minimally conscious
state can return to a more conscious state but it seems to me that
his is more a function of (a) degree of initial damage and (b) type
of treatment program used. I don't see how the MRI results provide
would lead to optimistic interpretation
Finally, as I mention above, Monti received his Ph.D. in 2007
and though I don't know when he got his UCLA appointment,
I'd bet he's coming up for tenure review real soon. This kind of
publicity might not be bad for his review.
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
P.S. Somewhat unrelated: don't you hate it when someone includes
a published abstract for a conference presentation in their publication
list?
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