http://www.msu.edu/course/hm/546/nyt_pvs.htm
As the tape of his sister's voice played, several distinct clusters of neurons in Rios's brain had fired in a manner virtually identical to that of a healthy subject. Some clusters that became active were those known to help process spoken language, others to recall memories. Was Rios recognizing his sister's voice, remembering her? "You couldn't tell the difference between these parts of his brain and the brain of one of my graduate students," says Hirsch, an expert in brain imaging at Columbia University. Even the visual centers of Rios's brain had come alive, despite the fact that his eyes were covered. It was as if his sister's words awakened his mind's eye.
The other clue emerged when the scientists played Rios the tape of his sister 's voice backward. When uninjured people hear backward voices, the regions of their brains that control language become more active than when they listen to recordings played forward. Their brains instantly recognize that the signal is unusual and respond by working harder to decode it. But when Rios heard his sister's voice played in reverse, his brain barely responded at all.
....
"That's it," Giacino said. "He's reading."
...
You wake up every morning but feel as if you're under a deep anesthesia. Images enter your eyes, and sounds enter your ears, but most of them reverberate through your brain without triggering any awareness. From time to time, you join the outside world at the sight of a familiar face or at the words of a loved one. Memories and meaning emerge. But as soon as that face or those words disappear, you sink back into darkness. Perhaps you can't even tell you're sinking -- perhaps your awareness leaps from one isolated moment to the next.
Если вы прочитаете статью, то получается интересная вещь. Пациенты в таком состоянии могут даже читать. Это очень высокоуровневая функция. С другой стороны, никто не считает овощем умственно осталых, которые неспособны научится читать.
Прочитав статью, я заметил что во всех экспериментах было общее: пассивность пациентов. Они реагируют, реагируют in an intelligent way, могут читать, но у них нет никаких своих желаний. Будучи предоставлены сами себе, они ни на что не реагируют. Их можно растормошить на время.
И тут мне пришло в голову. Да это же покинутые душой тела ! Мозг еще работает, сохранилась кора, а души нет. Соответственно, мозг который покинула душа ведет себя как компьютер: он может делать чтото, только если его попросят. Мы можем сделать компьютер которые переводит или рисует, но не можем сделать компьютер, которых захочет это делать. But it is excactly what is happening to them !
В быту мы иногда называем людей бездушными, хотя на самом деле это просто означает что душа у них черствая. Бездушный же человек просто лежит и ничего не хочет, то есть абсолютно ничего не хочет, хотя и имеет ментальные способности к мышлению