Minimally conscious states
Book review of 'Into The Grey Zone' by Adrian Owen
Adrian Owen is renowned for his work on disorders of consciousness. He has made groundbreaking discoveries using brain imaging demonstrating that some patients diagnosed as being in a “vegetative” state retain conscious awareness, and can be communicated with. Current estimates suggest that perhap somewhere between 10% to 20% of patients are in this situation. Owen's research has profoundly impacted the understanding of brain activity in patients with severe brain injuries, offering hope for better communication and diagnosis methods in such conditions.
His book, Into The Grey Zone, can be read on several levels: as an enthralling scientific detective story, as a story of broken minds and brains, or a book that feels incomplete, because the story it tells is not yet scientifically, medically, ethically or philosophically concluded.
Owen presents one of the most remarkable scientific stories of recent decades - the investigation of fractional human consciousness remaining in broken and damaged brains situated in still and unmoving bodies. Owen and his colleagues have shown that a substantial percentage of patients thought to be in a coma (perhaps one in five) are in a ‘grey zone’ somewhere between consciousness and coma.
Such patients are not ‘vegetative’: they are in there somewhere, but what condition they are in is difficult to know. They show some form of (at least minimal) consciousness. And modern brain imaging technologies has allowed communication to be re-established in many such cases.
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Owen describes using the latest in brain imaging technology to communicate with these seemingly mute, inexpressive, comatose patients. Fragmentary consciousness
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