Belgian neurologist wins 1m prize for work on serious brain trauma

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/19/belgian-neurologist-wins-1m-prize-for-work-on-serious-brain-trauma
Jennifer Rankin in Brussels

Belgian neurologist wins €1m prize for work on serious brain trauma

Sun 19 Jan 2020 11.00 GMT Last modified on Sun 19 Jan 2020 11.01 GMT

A pioneering Belgian neurologist has been awarded €1m to fund further work in helping diagnose the most severe brain injuries, as he seeks to battle “the silent epidemic” and help people written off as “vegetative” who, it is believed, will never recover.

Steven Laureys, head of the coma science group at Liège University hospital, plans to use the £850,000 award – larger than the Nobel prize – to improve the diagnosis of coma survivors labelled as being in a “persistent vegetative state”.

That is “a horrible term” he says, although still one widely used by the general public and many clinicians. Laureys, who has spent more than two decades exploring the boundaries of human consciousness, prefers the term “unresponsive wakefulness” to describe people who are unconscious but show signs of being awake, such as opening their eyes or moving. These patients are often wrongly described as being in a coma, a condition that only lasts a few weeks, in which people are completely unresponsive.

“The old view was to consider consciousness, which was one of the biggest mysteries for science to solve, as all or nothing,” he told the Guardian, shortly after he was awarded the Generet prize by Belgium’s King Baudouin Foundation this week. He said that a third of patients he treats at the Liège coma centre had been wrongly diagnosed as being in a vegetative state, despite signs of consciousness.

As a young doctor in the 1990s he was frustrated by the questions that torture the families of coma survivors: can their loved ones see or hear them? Can they feel anything, including pain?

Laureys and his 30-strong team of engineers and clinicians have shown that some of those with a “vegetative state” diagnosis are minimally conscious, showing signs of awareness such as responding to commands with their eyes.

Using MRI and PET scanners, the Liège team have sought more precise information about the consciousness of coma survivors. Radioactive glucose, injected into a patient’s veins and then consumed by the brain, helps the scanners reveal activity.

“Some [patients] are in that state, minimally conscious. [Some] will recover further. Others will not. So the only way forward is to increase our efforts to better document their efforts.”
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