Patient "Roused From Coma" By a Magnetic Therapy 123
missb writes "Could the gentle currents from a fluctuating magnetic field be used to reverse the effects of traumatic brain injury? New Scientist reports on a patient in the US who was in a coma-like state, but can now speak very simple words after being given transcranial magnetic stimulation. This is the first time TMS has been used as a therapy to try and rouse a patient out of a coma."
Correlation != Causation (Score:1, Insightful)
Who ever wrote TFS (possibly also TFA) should be made to write "Correlation does not imply causation" 100 times on the blackboard.
This does not mean that the magnetic therapy woke the patient from the coma. It merits examining the possibility correlation, but it does not by any means a proof this therapy had any hand in waking the patient from the coma.
Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:5, Insightful)
1. We compressed some plutonium with conventional explosives at a test site in the desert.
2. Coincidentally, a really large explosion occured, including large release of radiation.
Could it be that they are related ? I dunno....
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Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:5, Informative)
Transcranial magnetic stimulation [wikipedia.org] absolutely has a working scientific model behind it. Remember, your neurons are sensitive to electric potentials. Since electricity and magnetism are essentially the same thing, fluctuating magnetic fields can change those potentials causing the neurons to fire. This isn't late night QVC magnetic therapy bracelets we're talking about here, it's cutting edge neuroscience.
Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:4, Insightful)
There is always a big reflex of people crying 'psuedo-science' around here whenever they hear about magenetism, especially in relationship to health.
Yeah, magnetic and weak-current electrical stimulation of the brain is definitely cutting-neuroscience and these effects on the brain have been studied for years.
The lesson here: don't judge a book by its cover.
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First, most magnet cures are psuedo science.
Second they really should ahve cited pubmed.
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That's not a good lesson.
by all means adopt a reasonable starting position regarding a book based on the prior history of presentations resembling it's cover, since Occam's Razor favours this. it's a perfectly valid sceptical starting point, provided you are open to further verifiable evidence that can corroborate the cover's insinuations and promote them to a more rigourously established position.
a better lesson is that "don't judge a book by it's cover" is a logical fallacy of the "special pleading" typ
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of course, what i should have said was "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" rather than "occam's razor", since they are totally different things, and i've completely fucked up the thrust of my argument.
feel free to substitute in what i was supposed to say if you are at all interested in what i was trying to say, and i don't blame you if you arent :)
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Today's magnetic therapy magnets are next year's cutting edge neuroscience.
As I recall, 25 years ago modern science scoffed at acupuncture and said it was voo doo. Now, respectable medical institutions endorse the application of acupuncture as a valid medical procedure.
Sometimes, it's just a matter of actually looking into it. And, then looking into it more than you initially did.
(Note, I'm in no
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"As I recall, 25 years ago modern science scoffed at acupuncture and said it was voo doo. Now, respectable medical institutions endorse the application of acupuncture as a valid medical procedure."
Could you please cite these such institutions? I want to make sure I do not go there.
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Many, sadly they all know it doesn't work. It is provided as a profit center, no more no less. Since insurance has started paying for non evidence based treatments, natural they have started sghowing up in hospitals and medical office.
It's pretty much liability free money from someone who keeps coming back to never be cured by it.
Man, If I could 'repair' your car only to get you to come back every week for the same repair becasue you cars 'spirit is not aligned' I'd make a bundle.
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Considering that household pets have been shown to respond to acupuncture, I'd say that there is something to it, unless you're somehow claiming that animals are receptive to the "placebo effect"
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As I recall, 25 years ago modern science scoffed at acupuncture and said it was voo doo. Now, respectable medical institutions endorse the application of acupuncture as a valid medical procedure.
Sometimes, it's just a matter of actually looking into it. And, then looking into it more than you initially did.
From all that I've read, that's what they did with acupuncture (as in looking and more looking).
Which is why it would be extremely interesting to find a respectable medical institution actually endorsing it. As with any (mostly) harmless "alternative" therapy, most of them just let it happen in order not to alienate their patients.
(a "respectable institution" that once promoted operating with the patient holding the "little red book" and -supposedly- no anaesthesia as a proof that politics solve everything
Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:4, Interesting)
Incorrect. Acupuncture IS Woo.
There ahve been many blind studies to show no change with acupuncture.
Medical intitutions are now profit centers. Since people ahve to keep returning to get 'fixed' and there is NO LIABILITY with it so of course money driven management puts it in. They also put in soda machines, and those aren't any good for you either.
Yes, Medical science has been wrong, but acupuncture is a waste of money. There is NO EVIDENCE of it working.
Chiropractic treatments don't work either, and yet I can get those from medical institutions.
Again, this has been tested repeatably.
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Yeah, I'd imagine "every time you light a smoke, I'll shove this spear pretending to be a needle somewhere sensitive" would be quite effective ;).
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even if it's just placebo that's good enough for me.
I have some magic sand you might like to buy.
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Actually, the evidence seems to suggest that acupuncture-like treatments are probably beneficial in some limited scenarios. A German study last year, in particular, found that acupuncture was twice as effective as standard treatments for lower back pain [usnews.com]. That's not to say it cures all ills, but to say that there is no evidence of it working is just plain wrong.
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Go into any pharmacy/chemist in the UK and you can buy your bodyweight in homeopathic remedies.
It should be obvious to anyone with a background in science that homeopathy is quack science of the most blatant kind, yet it's available through the UK's National Health Service.
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I'll take a stab at this. I have a mate who's father is a doctor specializing in back injuries. He will at times refer patients to a chiropractor that is not part of the same medical facility and for whom he gets no benefits for referrals. If they didn't work, he wouldn't be referring them.
That said, there are a lot of wacky chiropractors out there. Some are just wacky, an
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That certainly depends on the situation. When I was in middle school I one day started getting these shooting pains in my back that caused me to double over. My father took me out of school and over to see a chiropractor. They determined that carrying my overloaded backpack on one shoulder was causing my spine to shift slightly, pinching the nerve, causing it to inflame, and become more pinched. They did some t
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The working model is called 'Hydrinos'
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irrelevent to the point.
1 time really means nothing. Also,they don't show a mechanism how this would allow someone to wake from a coma.
He is correct: Correlation != Causation
Now Pub med (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/) sites some studies, but I couldn't find a blinded study. There where many hits, so I could ahve easily missed a blinded study.
"Since electricity and magnetism are essentially the same thing,"
BWahahaha.. no, you go on.
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So, what you're saying is that if they hadn't figured out a working scientific model for mass to energy conversion before testing nuclear devices, you would be repeating the fact that correlation != causation after the experimental testing of the atomic bomb?
Wow, just..., wow..
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However, there is (as far as I know, feel free to educate me) no working scientific model on how fluctuating magnetic fields can treat brain injuries, so causation isn't quite reasonable.
I would start out assuming that employed researchers have a model for whatever they are testing when they test discrete things like this. This researcher probably did not throw a dart at a wall to decide what she was going to do to try to wake up coma patients.
Keep in mind that the article referenced is not the peer-reviewed journal article that will be forthcoming if this is real and not a scam. "New scientist" may have omitted the model that suggested this treatment because it required a deeper knowledg
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Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:4, Insightful)
Your right, given the explanation only we wouldn't know they're was a cause.
Now lets look at little bit more accurately at is, shall we? mm'kay.
Lets look at the atomic experiment:
1) There was a known a testable scientific mechanism for the explosion.
2) There were many tests bring plutonium to near critical mass prior to the first detonation.
3) Giant atomic explosion seldom happen in the desert on there own..meaning never.
Now lets look at thie situation in the article:
1) There is no know mechanism*
2) the experiment has never been successful
3) It is NOT repeatable
4) People do wake up from these coma months later. It's not uncommon even.
So which is more likely, Some unknown untestable magic treatment worked? or something that has happened before to other people happened here?
Bear in mind that he was 'treated' regularly in a manner that assured the treatment got the full benefit if there was a wake up, but none of the blame if there wasn't. this is a red flag.
*A mechanism is not necessary is some conditions.
For example. I can mix vinegar and baking soda and know it will fizz up. I can repeat the test so many times I can even measure different quantities of ingredients and measure those effect.
In this case there was not mechanism AND no repeatable or falsifiable test.
You can use correlation to for a hypothesis, but that is only good if you can test the hypothesis.
"(I.e. if the guy woke up during or right after the procedure if different then if he woke a week later.)"
Why would you think that?
Please take a moment to learn the scientific principles and how to do good studies.
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Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:5, Insightful)
Correlation implies either a causal relationship or a causal relationship with a third factor. In many cases the latter is MORE interesting than the former.
What TFA should have to write is that an anecdote does not equal data, never mind correlation.
If you give TMS to a hundred patients, three of whom would be expected to wake up naturally, and 90 of them actually wake up, you've got something worth investigating further. If you give it to one patient who wakes up you've got nothing but an interesting story.
Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:4, Insightful)
If you give TMS to a hundred patients, three of whom would be expected to wake up naturally, and 90 of them actually wake up, you've got something worth investigating further. If you give it to one patient who wakes up you've got nothing but an interesting story.
If three of them are expected to wake up and you get five you've got something worth investigating further. 90 is an unqualified success.
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If the average(expected) is 3 but the SD of that value is 2 then 5 people waking up really is not statistically significant.
Remember, know your Zs!
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Does that not depend on the error of your expectation of 3 waking up?
If the average(expected) is 3 but the SD of that value is 2 then 5 people waking up really is not statistically significant.
It -may- not be statistically significant. Its enough to make it worth repeating the experiment to ensure its not consistently one SD up.
After all, my if my batting average during a game is x +/- y, and something makes it x+y +/- y' I've just moved from the beer league to the major league. ;)
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If there is reason to suspect a low success rate, conducting an experiment with a high margin of error is a bad idea, the success will otherwise always be lost in the error noise.
What you REALLY need to do, is repeat the test multiple times, ideally with more people, so you can reduce the margin of error significantly and differentiate between error and small effects.
After all a low success rate isn't a bad thing... If you could wake up only 1% of a certain class of coma patients, even that would be a signi
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Depends on the variance, which I didn't give.
On Slashdot your example has to be a baseball bat that you use to beat people over the head, otherwise someone who thinks they know about stats will pipe up with something like "10 isn't a sufficient sample size!"
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No it doesn't. More favored pro football teams lost matches this week than last. I'm drinking more diet pepsi this week than last. The two are correlated. What's the causal relationship, or the causal relationship with a 3rd factor?
Correlated items *may* have a causal relationship, or a common cause. Or they may not. Sometimes they're just coincidences.
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No, things that are genuinely correlated ARE related, either directly or through a third factor.
Your example, if there is not a real relationship, would turn out to be a very weak correlation. You've only given two data points (this week and last week). If your Pepsi drinking and football team fortunes continue track each other until the correlation is significant, then the chances of coincidence are very small.
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You fail logic. Please crack open a basic book in logic and statistics. Things that are correlated *may* be related, but most frequently they aren't. Correlation does not mean causation, either directly or through a common cause.
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Hello? There are 2 points: this week and last week.
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No, you then have a premise for trying it out on more than a few people. What you correlation people don't understand is that these case studies lay the groundwork for larger experiments.
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Did you even read my comment?
Let me quote the salient portion for you:
"you've got something worth investigating further."
That would be "tryint it out on more than a few people" and a "larger experiment."
"Correlation people?" Geez.
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No, exactly what you wrote is "If you give it to one patient who wakes up you've got nothing but an interesting story.", which I disagreed with when I wrote "No, you then have a premise for trying it out on more than a few people. ".
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Correlation implies either a causal relationship or a causal relationship with a third factor. In many cases the latter is MORE interesting than the former.
Yes, but a single point of data does not imply correlation.
If they had done a controlled study with several dozen coma patients, and actually showed a statistically significant correlation, then it would be natural to conclude that there is some relationship. In this case? No, not at all.
"Correlation does not imply causation" gets overused around here,
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Er, thus the second paragraph of my comment. Followed by the third.
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If you give it to one patient who wakes up you've got nothing but an interesting story.
Unfortunately there's money to be made from an interesting story.
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You betcha. The multibillion dollar multinational business of alternative medicine depends on it.
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Its COMAS we're talking about here, not male pattern baldness or runny noses. Most of the time, if someone doesn't wake up after a few days, their chances for waking up go way down. The majority of people in a coma for more than a few days have obvious and serious neurological damage. A small majority of them have no major damage.
If you can wake someone up that would normally be in a coma for an undetermined period of time, using a cheap and relatively safe method like this, you do it. Even health insur
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The topic under discussion is whether the treatment proposed ACTUALLY wakes people up, or if it's a red herring.
Yes, it's important to know. If you get a witch doctor to dance in a bunch of coma patients' rooms you'll eventually have one wake up. By your reasoning, we should then pay witch doctors to go dance in every coma patient's room. Hey, it's cheap! And it's a COMA!
Unfortunately, that approach won't help us understand coma, improve treatment, or invent new treatments. Plus we'll be wasting money
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Yes, something isn't scientifically 'true' until it's been studied in that fashion, but don't dismiss the value of anecdotal evidence to guide scientific discovery. In this case, I'd say you have slightly more than an interesting story. You have at the very least cause to investigate further.
I have a neurological illness that I am currently recovering from. The treatment that is working for me (after trying many that didn't) is something that I'm using off-label - it has not been studied with even the basic
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No, you have an interesting story. Yes, interesting stories are absolutely worth following up, but they remain interesting stories until someone does so. I'm working on following up an interesting story regarding brain tumors right now (okay, that's what I'm supposed to be doing. Right now I'm posting on Slashdot).
While it's great that you're getting better, your conclusion that it's because of the treatment is premature, and it's dangerous if it's applied on a large scale. If the treatment works then i
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Your level of scientific rigor is admirable and to be expected, but I hope we agree that an interesting story that doesn't provide cause to investigate further is something quite different from an interesting story that does.
As for my conclusion, I'd think you'd need to know a little bit more about the particulars of this to say that "It's premature to reach that conclusion". There is no simpler explanation for why I'm getting better other than because of this treatment. If it were the placebo effect then
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Correlation implies either a causal relationship or a causal relationship with a third factor.
Only if the correlation is consistent and repeatable, and none of the two events occur with similar frequency without the other. Even then it's just a finite probability of causal relationships being involved.
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Are you seriously suggesting that the transcranial magnetic stimulation was caused by the patient waking up from the coma? Or that they were both caused by some unknown 3rd effect?
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I think he's suggesting that it's possible that there was no causal link (in either direction) between the two, and that it was mere coincidence.
Until more data is produced (and I didn't read TFA, so maybe there *is* more data), it's impossible to discredit the possibility that it was coincidence.
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Really?
Isn't correlation related to causation by first-order inductive logic. If you rob a theory of supporting evidence by reducing it to a single inference (as you have done above) then you merely weaken the argument, you do not however, invalidate it altogether.
It is important to allow inference from a specific case to a general case because to do so negates induction, causality, uniformity of nature, and science.
Then again, you may agree with Hume, or skeptical realism, and in either case I would love
Repetition != Cognition (Score:2)
"Correlation does not imply causation"
GAAAAAAAAH! Can you knee-jerk idiots just shut the hell up?
Learning to parrot a phrase does not make you smart.
1) A report of correlation is not a claim of proven causation
2) Observed correlation is the primary means of discovering causation.
People like you should be forced to write those two nuggets a thousand times across your fucking foreheads.
The saying you're regurgitating is meant to protect against overconfidence and rash conclusions. Using it to dismiss any and all observed correlations as irrelev
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What are you, some sort of literate participant? We can't have that kind of thing going on here!
Oh Great... (Score:2)
Oh great... Who wants to bet the Q-Ray braclet is going to see a resurgence in popularity...
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Re:hey! (Score:5, Funny)
If we're going by Pike rules... (Score:4, Funny)
She better hope he wasn't a Star Trek fan.
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Do you love me?
*two blinks*
Yes and yes...wonderful.
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Love games?
Do you love me? Are you playing your love games with me?
I just wanna know what to do 'cause I need your love a lot
Oh come on now
Do you love me? Are you playing your love games with me?
I just wanna know what to do 'cause I need your love a lot
Oh come on now
Moving too fast, this isn't a race ooh
Baby back off and lower the pace now
Slow it down, and give me some space, mmmh
Moving too fast, this isn't a race. ah ah
*funky music insert*
Do you love me? Are you playing your love games with me?
I just wanna
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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I think it's great that drunk drivers are being used for medical experimentation. Far better than tormenting innocent monkeys.
Not only drunk drivers, but all comatose people(then extend that idea to different medical trials on other ailments as well). Better to help advance medical science than to lay there and cost tremendous amounts of money doing nothing like Terry Schiavo did. Not that it was her fault, but you get the idea.
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Oh great ... you just *know* this is coming up in the debate tonight
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All Americans with half a brain are so very tired of modern televised debates which showcase a sort of half-scripted reality TV monkey house bullshit.
I'll stick to reading from a variety of sources to decide for myself, thankyouverymuch
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It doesn't matter what source you use. Both major-party candidates are the type of people who want votes from the half-brained TV watchers. The candidates would rather be elected and reelected by those people than to see the state of discourse improved. So long as that's the case, the candidates are part of the problem.
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Am I the only person to find this somewhat distressing, that this guy's only words are "Help me". It sounds like there might be a conciousness present that realises things aren't right. Imagine how disturbing (terrifying?) that could be.
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http://www.google.com/search?q=lyrics+metallica+one [google.com]
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Damn, beaten :)
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But did he WANT to be roused from his coma? (Score:1)
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I kinda agree. At least for magnetic fields doing the trick. I saw some stuff in "Naughty Nurses 37" about rousing from a coma that would be much more agreeable.
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Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that mild forms of violence would always be pretty?
Only if they result in a coma.
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Yeah, there was this huge bridge, really huge, with buildings on it, but my phone and tv were on the fritz most of the time.
Magnets Do Make You Smarter (Score:2, Funny)
>> magnetic field be used to reverse the effects of traumatic brain injury?
I threw a magnet at my brother-in-law, after he drank all my beer. He's a lot smarter as a result. Now he sneaks out after the beer is gone.
Oh, that's just great. (Score:2)
Someone tell Morrisey! (Score:2)
This is big news for someone with a girlfriend in a coma!
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Nathan Explosion?
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they what? (Score:2)
So they degaussed his head?
Crap, does that mean I am going to have to pay more for a degausser now?
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Crap, does that mean I am going to have to pay more for a degausser now?
It means we'll start getting spam for "cheap DegaUss3r pharmacy!"
Dense Headedness (Score:3, Informative)
"gentle currents from a fluctuating magnetic field"
TMS is not gentle. Even the latest, most focused but least powerful, ones cause such a mechanical strain on the mechanism when they fire, that they sound like a firecracker.
There is still a maximum amount allowed because too much causes headaches, then convulsions. TMS is a gentle ball peen hammer.
WARNING (Score:2)
While this seems to be cutting edge nearosurgery(look it up on pubmed.com) It is not the same thing as wearing magnets, standing around some magnets. This seem to be a very specific situation.
People hawking magic crap will site this as the same thing, it is not.
I only looked at three studies, but none of them were blinded.
Give me those dead harddisks please (Score:1)
News Flash (Score:1)
Read the article and will become clear... (Score:1)
TMS is incredibly neat stuff, worth looking up. (Score:1)
The article makes it seem like tinfoil hat stuff, but it's very, very interesting. When the frequency that the magnetic field fluctuates at is over 1000 hertz (I think that's the number) it increases the activity of the specific brain area it is aimed at. Below the cutoff it reduces the activity. Think just a moment, isn't it an incredibly ability to be able to activate or deactivate specific brain areas? I read somewhere that you can induce a feeling of "awe" or "being in the presence of God" with a ma
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Yeah wow lol.
Read a book [princeton.edu]. People use different words and spellings in different areas of the world.
Was "windscreen" equally funny to you?
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If you think "help" = "please kill me", you need help. Just saying...