CassandraX

"Think tennis for yes, home for no: how doctors helped man in vegetative state

• Brain-injured patient's thoughts 'read' by scanner
• Technique provides hope for others in similar state.


Images from an fMRI machine

Images from an fMRI machine showed that when the patient was asked a specific question and told to respond in a specific way, the same areas of his brain lit up as in a healthy person. Photograph: MRC

For seven years the man lay in a hospital bed, showing no signs of consciousness since sustaining a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. His doctors were ­convinced he was in a vegetative state. Until now.

To the astonishment of his ­medical team, the patient has been able to ­communicate with the outside world after scientists worked out, in effect, a way to read his thoughts.

They devised a technique to enable the man, now 29, to answer yes and no to ­simple questions through the use of a hi-tech scanner, monitoring his brain ­activity."

I am so impressed and so happy for all those people trapped in their bodies and unable to communicate, facing their life support being stopped, while being totally aware. A living nightmare that will hopefully end.

Clare Short at the Iraq war inquiry - live

* Short accuses Blair did not tell truth about war planning
* Claims Goldsmith misled cabinet about legality of war
* Attacks Blair for sidelining the cabinet
* Brown "very unhappy and marginalised" before war

YESSS!!! I love this woman.

Interview with Martin Amis. He dreads his decline as a writer. Great to know there are some novelists like him. Now, can someone give Philip Roth a call, please.....the guy is in danger of killing himself through repetition. Somebody help him!

Read the description in his memoir Experience of Kingsley's final years, and you will understand Amis's dread. He recalls his intellectually annihilated father sitting at his typewriter, typing the word "seagulls", over and over. He fears his own decline as a writer. "I've talked to Ian McEwan about this. Our fallback position is going to be that you write short stuff."

Yamanouchi, Japan: Macaque monkeys relax near the hot spring at the Jigokudani (Hell's Valley) monkey park



Luanda, Angola: A child crosses a flooded street in a suburb
Photograph: Rafael Marchante/Reuters



Sydney, Australia: A beach goer selects books from 30 red Ikea Billy bookcases lined up to form the world's longest outdoor bookcase to celebrate the 30th birthday of the brand's signature furniture piece, at Bondi Beach
Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

From the page: Tony Blair's decision to take Britain to war in Iraq was illegal, the Foreign Office's former chief legal adviser will tell the Chilcot inquiry this week.

The Observer has been told that Sir Michael Wood, who was the FO's most senior lawyer, is ready to reveal that, in the run-up to war, he was of the opinion that the conflict would have been unlawful without a second UN resolution. This will provide an explosive backdrop to the former prime minister's appearance before the inquiry on Friday.

The evidence from Wood, who will appear before the committee on Tuesday, will provide the firmest proof to date of the bitter wranglings that divided the government in the countdown to war.

His testimony will come the day before the appearance of Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, who is said to have dropped his legal objections days before the invasion, following intense pressure from Blair and his closest advisers, and the US authorities.

Wow, this is the first time I've seen this! Muuuuummm, I'm on YouTube!!!!!!!