Adrian Owen: Awake. Aware. Unable to Move.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Did you know with the Sam's Club app, you're technically in the club, no matter where you are? Like, this is a club.
This is also a club.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:09)
And this is, shh, a club. My bad.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:13)
Come join us, Sam's Club.

**Adrian Owen** (0:15)
I think we're asking completely the wrong question. These people were hiding in plain sight. It was absolutely terrifying.

**Curt Jaimungal** (0:20)
This is Adrian Owen, professor of cognitive neuroscience at Western University. Today, we talk about the revolutionary method to detect trapped consciousness in patients we previously thought were completely unaware, not able to move or speak.

**Adrian Owen** (0:36)
We scanned him. He was aware, conscious throughout. The response I would typically get from my neurological colleagues is, well, no, that can't be possible. And I would say, well, how would you know? The whole point is you would never know.

**Curt Jaimungal** (0:47)
On this channel, I, Curt Jaimungal, interview researchers regarding their theories of reality with rigor and technical depth. Today's episode may pave the way for a new dawn of a science of consciousness, something we previously thought was impossible. And it's all thanks to Adrian Owen.
So when did you first find someone in there?

**Adrian Owen** (1:08)
Well, that's a great question. And it depends really on what you mean by in there. I mean, the first time we actually put a behaviourally non-responsive patient into a scanner and looked at what was going on in their brain was 1997
What we did at the time was to show her pictures of faces of her friends and family and the part of her brain that we know processes faces lit up. And so in some senses, that was the first time that we saw anything resembling somebody being in there. But the big question was, was she really in there? Is she, was she having that experience? Or was this just her brain sort of firing off automatically to familiar material from a world that she knew before her injury?

**Curt Jaimungal** (1:52)
Most of this channel, we talk about three aspects of consciousness. One is how do you define it? Well, what is the definition of consciousness? Number two is what's the explanation of consciousness? And then three is more about measurements. But this latter third one is underexplored on this channel.
You're squarely in that zone. Can you talk about what it's like to measure consciousness?

**Adrian Owen** (2:14)
Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, for me, it's not really about theories of consciousness or even understanding necessarily what consciousness is. The position I come from is trying to work out whether another being's inner world, their subjective experience, if you like, is like mine or not like mine.
That's really all I need to know. I'm faced with patients every day who are critically ill. They're non-responsive. They may have had some kind of brain injury, a stroke or a traumatic brain injury or even a cardiac arrest that has resulted in a lack of oxygen to the brain. They're non-responsive. They're just lying there in their beds and you ask them to blink an eye, they won't do it. If you ask them to squeeze your hand, they won't do it. The question is, well, could they actually be inside? Could they be consciously intact, if you like, aware of who they are, where they are and the predicament that they're in?
Can we get to that without resorting to behavior? You're absolutely right. Measurement is really, for me, is the most important thing. And it's really about measuring whether somebody's subjective experience is like mine or not.

**Curt Jaimungal** (3:30)
Now, it sounds quite terrifying to be trapped. So what is that experience like?

**Adrian Owen** (3:37)
Well, we know from several patients who have recovered over the years and have reported back to us what it was like.
One gentleman who springs to mind immediately, a Canadian young man about 19 years old, we put through the mill, we scanned him, we had him do all sorts of things and turns out that he was aware, conscious throughout and he, about nine months after we scanned him, went on to actually make a very good recovery. He took himself back to college eventually. And he described what it was like. And I mean, yes, you're right. I mean, he said it was absolutely terrifying. The thing that kept him going was the knowledge that he thought he was always going to come out of this. He was fairly confident that he was going to recover. But the idea, I mean, he remarked on several occasions about how odd it was to have conversations being had about him in his presence as though he were not there, when in fact he was completely conscious and following the whole narrative of the conversation.