The Schiavo case is the kind of family fight that doctors treating brain-damaged patients say they dread.
Ms. Schiavo is not the first brain-damaged patient to become the subject of national debate.
Unilaterally brain-damaged patients provide the classic source of data, beginning with Broca's observations in the nineteenth century.
Findings obtained with brain-damaged patients are discussed first, followed by the results of studies carried out with normal subjects.
The experimental findings have been corroborated by reports from studies with brain-damaged patients.
Using this method, a device which reads and transmits the thoughts of brain-damaged patients could become a reality in the future.
But it was his work with brain-damaged patients with impaired decision-making skills that led him to wonder about emotions.
As a portrait of bizarrely brain-damaged patients, it still had a sketchy, hurried feel.
The nursing home workers then bribed a brain-damaged fifty-year-old patient to attack the older man.
But with the recent finding, some families of brain-damaged patients are likely to insist on brain imaging.