Author: Adrian Owen
Format: 140x200mm
Number of pages: 296
Binding: Paperback
Manufacturer: Triton
Year of publication: 2018

Neuroscientist Adrian Owen made a groundbreaking discovery with his team. He demonstrated that the severely damaged brains of some immobile and unresponsive patients show distinct activity on functional magnetic resonance imaging. Statistically, this affects almost every fifth patient in a vegetative state. The discovery was first published by scientists in the journal Science. The dim world of consciousness of these patients - somewhere between life and death - Owen called the "gray zone".

People who inhabit this twilight zone are often considered to be irretrievably lost – judged to lack awareness and self-awareness. The shocking discovery is that this is not the case: their intact consciousness actually remains trapped deep inside a devastated body and destroyed brain. These people hear everything around them, are able to perceive and remember, feel emotions, have thoughts running through their heads, feel joy and pain - just like the rest of us. They are neither truly alive nor truly dead. They silently survive in the "grey zone". Thanks to Owen's pioneering method, we can now communicate with these individuals (that is, not only those who suffer from the so-called locked-in syndrome like the character from the book and movie Space Suit and the Butterfly) - we can talk to them - and they will respond with pleasure through their brains.