Into the Grey Zone

Guest: Adrian Owen, PhD, Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging at the Brain and Mind Institute of Western University, Ontario, Canada. Author of “Into the Grey Zone: A Neuroscientist Explores the Border Between Life and Death” Anyone who’s held the hand of a loved one who’s lying unconscious and unresponsive in a hospital bed has agonized over questions like: Do they know what’s happening? Do they know I’m here with them? Can they hear my voice? Are they maybe even trying to respond and just can’t get their body to cooperate?  The idea that someone could be fully-conscious but unable to let the world know is terrifying. And it’s a heart-wrenching thing for that person’s family to be faced with decisions about medical treatment not knowing if their loved one is in there, or not.    Renowned neuroscientist Adrian Owen believes that using brain scans, he can answer that question. In some cases he can even communicate with, and get a response back, from someone in a vegetative state. It’s amazing stuff, which he details in his new book, “Into the Grey Zone.”