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WESTERN UNIVERSITY • CANADA’S ONLY DAILY STUDENT NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED 1906
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2014
Western TV launches at the Spoke
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Kevin Hurren NEWS EDITOR-AT-LARGE @KevinAtGazette
“We’re new, we’re different and we’re not Big Purple Couch.” That wasn’t just the message from Lucy Robert, one of the co-coordinators for the newly rebranded Western TV, but the entire theme of Monday night’s launch party. Students gathered in the Spoke at 8 p.m. to watch the first live filming of Western TV, a media subsidiary of the University Students’ Council formerly known as Big Purple Couch. Along with watching an interview with USC president Matt Helfand and performances by the Sonic Art Society and Matt McGrath, attendants got a first look at the new Monday evening programming structure. Previously, the show had been recorded in The Spoke every Thursday afternoon. Now, Western TV filming will only occur one Monday night a month with regular segments posted online. “It’s completely student organized so we don’t have a lot of time to plan everything on a weekly schedule,” explained Ramon Sanchez, the second co-coordinator for Western TV who, along with Robert, organizes content for the program. “With this new monthly schedule we have more time to plan it and make the shows higher quality in terms of content and technical aspects,” he said. The change in times won’t only affect the planning stages but also the feel of the show, said Robert.
Kelly Samuel • GAZETTE
MONEY STRESSES ME OUT. Students may stress about their money but a new guide tries to help ease the pain. It’s all about budgeting, keeping track of your spending and finding the best deals. SEE PAGE 3 FOR MORE.
Vegetative patient shows signs of consciousness Western team use Hitchcock movie in pioneering study Hamza Tariq NEWS EDITOR @HamzaAtGazette
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Researchers at Western’s Brain and Mind Institute have pioneered a novel technique of detecting consciousness in vegetative patients. The patients were shown “Bang! You’re Dead,” an episode from Alfred Hitchcock Presents… while they were inside the 3T Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scanner at Western’s Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping. “One of the patients had a pattern of brain activity that indicated they were following the plot of the movie,” said Rhodri Cusack, an associate professor at the Brain and Mind Institute. “Like healthy adults, in the frontal and parietal
lobes of the brain they showed a peak in activity at moments of suspense and a dip in activity in less engaging parts.” Cusack’s colleagues on the project include postdoctoral fellow Lorina Naci and researchers Mimma Anello and Adrian Owen. According to Cusack the usual way to diagnose if a person is conscious is to observe their behavior — by asking them to do something and observing their responses. However, as vegetative patients are unable to control their movements it is thus difficult to detect their state of consciousness. The results of this research could lead to development of methods that could allow vegetative patients to have some degree of control over their environment, in things as simple as listening to music. “We already know that up to one in five of these patients are misdiagnosed as being unconscious and this new technique may reveal that that number is even higher,” Naci said.
According to Naci, this is the first time that mental activity has been recorded in vegetative patients that is on par with the mental processes of healthy individuals. One patient who was part of the research had been unresponsive for 16 years. However, brain scans during the movie showed that his brain was analyzing and interpreting the visuals — proving that he was conscious. “The new technique has many exciting new applications, and has been very well received by neuroscientists, physicians and the broader public,” Cusack said. Future studies of this kind will show how many vegetative patients are actually conscious and can be helped with new techniques. “This approach can detect not only whether a patient is conscious, but also what that patient might be thinking,” Owen said. “Thus, it has important practical and ethical implications for the patient’s standard of care and quality of life.”
Key Facts • One in five patients are incorrectly diagnosed as unconscious • Two vegetative patients part of groundbreaking research • Patient in vegetative state for 16 years found to be conscious • Alfred Hitchcock movie used to analyze consciousness • Patient responded to movie the same as a healthy subject • Results could allow patients to do activities not possible before