Featured Article Academic Journal Main Category: MRI / PET / Ultrasound Also Included In: Neurology / Neuroscience;Medical Devices / Diagnostics;Biology / Biochemistry Article Date: 02 Jul 2012 - 3:00 PDT

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Bettina Sorger of Maastricht University in The Netherlands and colleagues report their work in the 28 June online issue of Current Biology.

Human communication depends on being able to move and use a multiplicity of muscles, such as in forming sounds and words and making gestures and facial expressions. To do this the neuromuscular system must be healthy and undamaged. But severely motor-disabled patients, such as those with locked-in syndrome, who are fully conscious and aware, can't have a back-and-forth conversation because their neuromuscular system is not intact.

The challenge to scientists trying to find ways to enable such patients to communicate is to tap into those parts of the brain that are performing the mental tasks of communication but are denied the means with which to express them physically, using the motor system or voluntary muscles.

fMRI tracks brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow (hemodynamics) and oxygen in the brain. When a brain area is more active it uses more oxygen, and to meet this increase in demand, the blood flow to the area increases. Thus using fMRI, researchers can produce activation maps that show which parts of the brain are involved in particular brain processes.

Neuroscientists like Adrian Owen and his team have already used fMRI to assess consciousness in people thought to be in an unconscious vegetative state and thus incapable of thought, and enabled them to respond yes or no to questions.

This latest study by Sorger and colleagues takes that work a stage further, as Sorger explained to the press:

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FMRI Brain Scanner Reads Thoughts Letter By Letter