FIGURE 3.2 Evidence of awareness? When asked to imagine playing tennis or navigating her home, a noncommunicative patient’s brain (top) exhibited activity similar to a healthy person’s brain (bottom). Researchers wonder if such fMRI scans might enable a “conversation” with some unresponsive patients, by instructing them, for example, to answer yes to a question by imagining playing tennis (top and bottom left), and no by imagining walking around their home (top and bottom right).
Courtesy of Adrian M. Owen, the Brain and Mind Institute, Western University