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Welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.

My guest today is a scientist who reads minds.

I hope you enjoy it.

Neuroscientist Adrian Owen has spent much of his career exploring the

gray zone as he calls it, a realm of consciousness inhabited by people

with severe brain injuries who are unable to respond

to the world around them and are assumed to be unaware.

But a chance discovery led him to question this.

Could some of these patients in fact be aware and conscious

even though they don't appear to be? And he's discovered that yes some are,

trapped inside their bodies listening to what's going on with thoughts and emotions much like the rest of us.

This emerging field of science has implications not only for the patients but for philosophy and the law,

so it's perhaps not surprising that Adrian's work has

often forced him into the media spotlight. A British scientist, he now heads up a

research program at Western University in Canada, dedicated to reaching people in this

gray zone. Professor Adrian Owen, welcome to the life scientific. Thank you. It's

lovely to be here. Your life's quest Adrian to seek out awareness in these patients makes you in a very real

sense I guess a mind reader would that be a fair assessment I guess what we do

is as close to mind reading as is possible we're trying to get into the heads of these

patients to give them a voice that they otherwise don't have so yes I have been

labelled the mind reader and you know I don't mind and of course these patients you study are severely brain injured for listeners and for me how do they appear

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