INTO THE GRAY ZONE : A Neuroscientist Explores The Mysteries Of The Brain And The Border between Life and Death
Adrian OwenBRAND NEW, PAPERBACK
RM26.00
Examine What It Means To Be Conscious & What Is The Difference Between A Brain & A Mind
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Description
In this startling and thought-provoking book, which will remind readers of works by Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande.
If you are 100% paralyzed from a brain injury, whether it is from disease or an accident, you are very likely to be diagnosed quite quickly as being in a vegative state.
The next step is to remove the life support. And you’re dead.
But say your body is dead but your mind is 100% alive and well in that heavy, iron Diving Bell and you could hear and see everything that was going on?
You might want to live if people knew that and were willing to provide you with intellectual stimulation and know your choices?
This book details exactly how that communication is possible.
The author, a world-renowned neuroscientist reveals his controversial, groundbreaking work with patients whose brains were previously thought vegetative or non-responsive but turn out—in up to 20 percent of cases—to be vibrantly alive, existing in the “Gray Zone” between full consciousness and brain death.
Into the Gray Zone takes readers to the edge of a dazzling, humbling frontier in our understanding of the brain: the so-called “gray zone” between full consciousness and brain death.
In 2006 Dr Adrian Owen and his team made medical history. They discovered a new realm of consciousness, a twilight zone somewhere between life and death.
They called this the Grey Zone. The people who inhabit the Grey Zone are frequently labelled as being irretrievably lost, with no awareness and no sense of self.
The shocking truth is that they are often still there, an intact mind trapped deep inside a broken body and brain, hearing everything around them, experiencing emotions, thoughts, pleasure and pain, just like the rest of us.
Not quite living, and not quite gone, they have existed silently in these shadowlands.
But now, through Dr Owen’s pioneering techniques, we can talk to them – and they can talk back.
These shifting boundaries of consciousness have shaken the architecture of our sense of self.
We have known for a long time that a body does not define a person – but what if a brain does not define a mind? What does it mean if a mind can exist unharmed within a deeply damaged brain?
Through cutting edge research and case studies that are poignant, tragic and uplifting, Dr Owen maps this inner universe of the self, showing us what it means to be alive and human.
People in this middle place have sustained traumatic brain injuries or are the victims of stroke or degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Many are oblivious to the outside world, and their doctors believe they are incapable of thought.
But a sizeable number are experiencing something different: intact minds adrift deep within damaged brains and bodies.
An expert in the field, Adrian Owen led a team that, in 2006, discovered this lost population and made medical history.
Scientists, physicians, and philosophers have only just begun to grapple with the implications.
Following Owen’s journey of exciting medical discovery, Into the Gray Zone asks some tough and terrifying questions, such as:
● What is life like for these patients?
● What can their families and friends do to help them?
● What are the ethical implications for religious organizations, politicians, the Right to Die movement, and even insurers?
And perhaps most intriguing of all: in defining what a life worth living is, are we too concerned with the physical and not giving enough emphasis to the power of thought?
What, truly, defines a satisfying life?
This book is about the difference between a brain and a mind, a body and a person.
It is about what these fascinating borderlands between life and death have taught us about being human.
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KIRKUS REVIEW :
An exploration of the current medical research on brain health and the consciousness of patients who suffer catastrophic head trauma.
Throughout a fascinating multidecade research study, renowned neuroscientist Owen (Cognitive Neuroscience/Western Univ., Canada) probed the mysterious and uncharted shadowlands of the so-called “gray zone,” the middle ground between brain death and neural cognitive alertness.
His interest was triggered after a former partner suffered a brain aneurysm and was left in a vegetative state, though the author often wondered if some sort of brain activity resided within her.
Owen spotlights clinical case studies he monitored in which critically injured patients became “trapped in between in the minimally conscious state” yet demonstrated brain activity; some even returned to full consciousness.
With each patient experiment and experience, the author and his fellow researchers expanded their scope of knowledge and pieced together cohesive theories and conclusions about brain function, memory commitment, and conscious awareness.
Continually aided by revolutionary brain scanning technology in which “we connect with these brains, visualizing their function and mapping their inner universe,” his research has also incorporated many different aspects of life as well.
Owen wrestled with issues such as a patient’s right to die and the difference between a human brain understanding speech patterns presented to it versus simply experiencing them.
With remarkable clarity, Owen punctuates his findings with concise dispatches on the human condition and the disparities between what is considered quality of life and what some consider an inhumane, dysfunctional existence.
In an engrossing and intensive narrative, the author shares his findings that 15 to 20 percent of the diagnosed vegetative-state patients he interacted with were actually partially to fully conscious, though their bodies were unable to physically respond to outward stimuli.
By calling attention to this neurological phenomenon, Owen advocates for improved therapies and further experiments to more fully understand these “intact minds adrift deep within damaged bodies and brains.”
A striking scientific journey that draws hopeful attention to how the brain reacts, restores, and perseveres despite grave injury.
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About the Author
Adrian Owen is currently the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and imaging at The Brain and Mind Institute, Western University, Canada. He has spent the last twenty years pioneering breakthroughs in cognitive neuroscience. Among the media outlets that have featured Adrian’s research are The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Nature, The Lancet, Science, and The New England Journal of Medicine.
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