Evidence of awareness? When asked to imagine playing tennis or navigating her home, a vegetative 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).