Because they told him to.

They're saying he isn't vegetative but 'trapped' in his body.

Yes, I understand they told him to. But how did they measure it?

As I understand it, the question was "is Alex your dad" and to confirm that they told him to think of tennis as a 'yes' (and traffic as a "no"). But how did they measure he actually thought of a tennis scene? Can u see that on a MRI scan lol?

Tennis is 'motor' while walking the streets is 'spatial'.

They affect different areas of the brain and as such can be seen on a MRI scan.

That is correct, I mean an MRI scan can not show that you are thinking of a certain scene; So the results may be flawed in that case.

But I don't doubt that they tried this on a patient in a persistent vegetative state, and if I could find out exactly how accurate the results they gained were, then I would produce an opinion on whether I think this is bs or not. If the man answered "yes, no" questions with 80%+ accuracy then I would be inclined to believe this story.

I'll check, I'm assuming the results of this would be published somewhere.

-edit-

Just read it in the OP, he got five out of six right. Which is plenty accurate enough, but I want to know why they used such a small sample size.

Okay, I accept that.

Still the article is fuzzy since it concludes with 

"Scientists admit to being "astonished" by the result, which has enormous implications for the care and treatment of vegetative patients."

This reminds me of that case with a locked-in guy, also from Belgium, where that therapist chick 'communicated' with him. And Randi said it was a hoax.

@ Slimebeats - I found this research paper, "Thought translation, tennis and Turing tests in the vegetative state" on springerlink which is the case used in this article, it looks like it does work.

They are monitoring the brain activity for two very different tasks, tennis, which is a motor task and moving through complex objects, which is a spatial navigation task. whichever part of the brain is active by thinking of the task, it will be translated to yes or no.

It does work.

Yes, I absolutely believe blood flow in those two distinct areas of the brain show on an MRI.

Wow, that's pretty awesome. I wish they had asked some more questions for more accuracy though, but it's still pretty awesome

Rainbird said: Wow, that's pretty awesome. I wish they had asked some more questions for more accuracy though, but it's still pretty awesome

In the paper they published about this, they justified only asking six questions as an more than sufficiently accurate result. Essentially what they had to do was pass an augmented Turing test, and six complex questions is sufficient enough to prove that you're communicating with a human.

In all fairness, if they were wrong about their hypothesis the results for each question should have been null (neither yes or no).

highwaystar101 said: Rainbird said: Wow, that's pretty awesome. I wish they had asked some more questions for more accuracy though, but it's still pretty awesome In the paper they published about this, they justified only asking six questions as an more than sufficiently accurate result. Essentially what they had to do was pass an augmented Turing test, and six complex questions is sufficient enough to prove that you're communicating with a human. In all fairness, if they were wrong about their hypothesis the results for each question should have been null (neither yes or no).

Assuming the answers are clear 'yes' or 'no', which I very much doubt. There's a lot of factors in play here when analyzing MRI scans. First the neurological lag from input to increased blood flow in a certain part of the brain, also the response could be difficult to interpret  - subjecitive evaluation of the results, like "hmm is that really a significant increase in blood flow" etc.

I am amazed that there's only 6 questions recorded in 3 years of research of this patient.

I'm very sceptical. And I hope it's false, it would be terrible if there's people in what looks to be a vegetative state, but in fact being aware of stuff but unable to tell or do anything lol.