How Doctors Peer into the Minds of Vegetative Patients
From: Scientific American - 05/01/2014
By: Adrian M. Owen

Communicating with patients who appear to lack consciousness is becoming a
reality

Improved trauma care has led to more people surviving brain injury but ending
up in vegetative or minimally conscious states. Researchers are devising
imaging techniques to determine which patients retain some awareness or might
regain consciousness.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging has revealed, surprisingly, that a
portion of patients who are labeled "vegetative" are in fact conscious. Some
can answer questions by imagining one activity for "yes" and another for "no".

Investigators are now turning to electroencephalographic technology to try to
devise a bedside approach to detecting consciousness. On the more distant
horizon are brain-computer interfaces that would enable patients with hidden
consciousness to communicate.

Read the entire article at:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-doctors-peer-into-the-minds-of-vegetative-patients

Links:
Owen Lab
http://www.owenlab.uwo.ca

Eyes Open, Brain Shut
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eyes-open-brain-shut

Consciousness Might Emerge from a Data Broadcast
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/consciousness-might-emerge-from-a-data-broadcast

Related:

Can We Quantify Machine Consciousness?
From: IEEE Spectrum - 06/2017

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) makes a number of counterintuitive
predictions amenable to empirical tests. One prediction is that a nearly
silent neocortex, in which few neurons are actively firing, has conscious
experiences. This has allowed the development of a device for assessing
consciousness in humans, a combination of a magnetic coil to stimulate the
brain and a high-density net of EEG electrodes to detect its response - a
crude kind of consciousness meter. This device has already been used to
ascertain whether brain-damaged or anesthetized patients unable to
communicate are conscious or not.

Read the entire article at:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/can-we-quantify-machine-consciousness

Links:
Marcello Massimini
https://www.cifar.ca/profiles/marcello-massimini

A Consciousness Meter
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/koch/CR/CR-Consciousness-Meter-13.pdf