
Routly went through a brutal brain injury after a car accident almost 12 years ago. Conventional evaluations indicated that he has no sign of awareness, or any ability to communicate. However 39-years-old Routley has now provided answers to questions like he wasn’t in pain. This was achieved by scanning his brain activity in a functional MRI scanner. Dr. Adrian Owen of the Centre for Brain and Mind at the University of Western Ontario stated that “asking a patient something important to them has been our aim for many years. In future we could ask what we could do to improve their quality of life. It could be simple things like the entertainment we provide or the times of day they are washed and fed.”
Dr. Owen shifted to Cambridge, U.K., to London, Ont., when he was offered the position of Canada Excellence Research Chair, giving him an allowance of $10 million in federal funding over seven years, the university said. The documentary followed several vegetative and minimally-conscious patients in Britain and Canada for more than a year.
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