[Schtarflucz]

Yup, Steve Laueys is among the leading specialist about consciousness disorders. His team is also behind the methodology of the fMRI study that showed that a woman, thought to be in a vegetative state, was able to perform mental imagery tasks (like imagining she's playin tennis, or wandering in her house).

I work at the same university and I have already had the occasion to talk with him. He's not the kind of guy to buy phony stuff. I'd be very surprised if he accorded any credit to FC, even though the patient's family might do.

BTW, he works in the same lab as the people who publishes the early birds/night owls paper featured on HN a few months ago.

[Semiapies]

Have his results and methodology been replicated by other researchers, though? I've had trouble finding mentions of such. Having a methodology that only one guy can "make work" sounds more than a little like Steven Hayne's bite mark frauds.

[Schtarflucz]

The methodology of the mental imagery paper has been published in detail as a separate paper (by Melanie Boly who actually designed the experiment).

There are various telltale signs of consciousness that can be detected by PET scan. Vegetatve patients have their associative cortices deactivated, especially the precuneus that's known to be involved in the processing of information about oneself.

Furthermore, you can detect using PET that the activity of the cortex and the thalamus are correllated in controls, but not in vegetative patients.

These results have been published 15 years ago, I supposed that they've been reproduced since that time. The main criticism that they received was that they were passive measurements.

The imagery experiment requires he subject to perform the various tasks during several blocks of 30 seconds inside the MRI scanner. Vegetative subjects only show a brief activation of the primary auditory crtices while the instructions are given. Controls show an activation of different higher level areas involved on the task.

The patient of the Owen paper (Science 2006) showed an cortical activation comparable to controls although she was completely non communicative and remained so during several months.

I don't know what test were performed for the patient discussed in this HN thread, but I know that they have more than enough reliable tests to detect awareness in non communicative patients.