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如果植物人都有意识会怎样?

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Imagine this scenario.

想象一下这个场景。

You've unfortunately had a terrible accident.

你不幸遭遇了一场严重的事故。

You're lying in a hospital bed and you're aware—you're aware but you're unable to respond, but the doctors and your relatives don't know that.

躺在医院的病床上,你有意识但无法作出回应,医生和你的亲属也并不知道你有意识。

You have to lie there, listening to them deciding whether to let you live or die.

你不得不躺在那里,听他们决定让你活着还是死去。

I can think of nothing more terrifying.

我想不出有什么比这更可怕的了。

I'm Dr. Adrian Owen.

我是阿德里安-欧文医生。

I'm the author of ‘Into the Gray Zone’, a neuroscientist explores the border between life and death.

我写了《进入灰色地带》,这是关于一位神经科学家探索生命和死亡之间的边界的故事。

Communication is at the very heart of what makes us human.

沟通是使我们成为人类的核心所在。

It's the basis of everything.

它是一切的基础。

What we're doing is we're returning the ability to communicate to some patients who seem to have lost that forever.

我们正在做的是让一些似乎永远失去沟通能力的病人恢复沟通能力。

The vegetative state is often referred to as a state of wakefulness without awareness.

植物人状态通常是一种没有意识的清醒状态。

Patients open their eyes, they'll just gaze around the room.

病人睁开眼睛,注视着房间的四周。

They'll have sleeping and waking cycles, but they never show any evidence of having any awareness.

他们会有睡眠和觉醒周期,但没有证据显示出他们有任何意识。

So, typically, the way that we assess consciousness is through command following.

因此,通常情况下,我们评估意识的方式是通过命令跟踪。

We ask somebody to do something, say, squeeze our hand, and if they do it, you know that they’re conscious.

我们让病人做一些事情,比如说捏一下我们的手,如果他们做到了,我们就知道他们是有意识的。

The problem in the vegetative state is that these patients by definition can produce no movements.

根据定义,植物人状态是,这些病人不能做任何动作。

And the question I asked is, well, could somebody command follow with their brain?

我想问,有植物人能用大脑来发出指令吗?

It was that idea that pushed us into a new realm of understanding this patient population.

正是这个想法打开了我们理解这个病人群体的新领域。

When a part of your brain is involved in generating a thought or performing an action, it burns energy in the form of glucose, and it's replenished through blood flow.

当大脑的一部分产生一个想法或执行一个动作时,它会以葡萄糖的形式燃烧能量,并通过血液流动得到能量补充。

As blood flows to that part of the brain, we're able to see that with the FMRI scanner.

当血液流向大脑的区域时,我们能够通过FMRI扫描仪看到它。

I think one of the key insights was the realization that we could simply get somebody to lie in the scanner and imagine something and, based on the pattern of brain activity, we will be able to work out what it is they were thinking.

我认为其中一个关键之处是,我们可以让某人躺在扫描仪里,想象一些东西,并根据这些东西来判断他是否对此有兴趣,这样的话我们将能够知道他们在想什么。

We had to find something that produces really a quite distinct pattern of activity that was more or less the same for everybody.

我们必须找到一种能产生相当独特的模式的东西,这种活动模式对每个人来说都差不多。

So, we came up with two tasks.

因此,我们想出了两个任务。

One task, imagine playing tennis, produces activity in the premotor cortex in almost every healthy person we tried this in.

一项任务是想象打网球,人们的前皮层会被调动起来,我们在每个健康人身上都试过这个任务。

A different task, thinking about moving from room to room in your house, produces an entirely different pattern of brain activity;

一个不同的任务是想象在你的房子里,从一个房间移动到另一个房间,产生一个完全不同的大脑活动模式。

particularly, it involves a part of the brain known as the parahippocampal gyrus.

特别是它涉及到大脑的一个部分,即侧副沟的内侧为海马旁回。

And again, it's very consistent across different people.

而且,这在不同的人之间的效果是非常一致的。

So, we realized that we could use this as a simple mechanism for asking yes or no questions.

因此,我们意识到,我们可以把它作为一个简单的机制来问是或否的问题。

We could say, well, I'm going to ask you a question.

我们可以说,好吧,我将问你一个问题。

If the answer is yes, imagine playing tennis.

如果答案是肯定的,想象一下打网球。

If the answer is no, imagine thinking about moving through the rooms of your home.

如果答案是否定的,想象一下在你家里的各个房间里移动。

I can still remember exactly what it felt like the first time we saw a patient that we thought was in a vegetative state activate their brain in the scanner.

我仍然清楚地记得我们第一次看到一个被认为处于植物状态的病人在扫描仪中激活了他们的大脑时的感觉。

The patient's name was Kate.

这个病人的名字叫凯特。

Nobody would have predicted that we would have seen brain activity in response to asking a patient to do something.

没有人会预料到,我们会看到大脑活动对要求病人做一些事情的反应。病人做一些事情。

And when we first saw it, it was absolutely astonishing.

当我们第一次看到它时,这绝对是令人吃惊的。

Before we made that discovery, nobody ever bothered to look at any of these patients.

在我们发现这点之前,没有人愿意去看这些病人。

Very few people even ask the question: Is it possible that some of them are there?

甚至很少有人问这个问题:有没有可能他们中的一些人是存在的?

Now, people ask this question all the time.

现在,人们一直在问这个问题。

We've scanned several hundred patients who were presumed to be in a vegetative state.

我们已经扫描了几百个被认为是处于植物状态的病人。

It turns out that about 20%, or one in five of them, is not that at all.

结果发现,大约20%,或者说五分之一的人,根本不是那样。

By that, I mean they're aware of the situation they're in, they're aware of conversations going on around them, they have thoughts, they have emotions.

我的意思是,他们知道他们所处的情况,他们能明白周围人的对话,他们有思想,有情绪。

They maybe even have feelings about their future but are largely unable to move any part of their body.

他们甚至可能对自己的未来有感觉,但他们基本上不能移动身体的任何部分。

I think you could very easily describe what we've done as an early version of mind reading.

你可以认为我们所做的是早期版本的读心术。

I think over the next few years this is going to be a really exciting area of research and we will move closer and closer to being able to decode what somebody is actually thinking.

我认为在未来的几年里,这将是一个非常令人兴奋的研究领域,我们将越来越接近于能够解码植物人的真实想法了。

We are now in a position where we can ask some of these patients what it is that would make them more comfortable, even, are you in any pain?

我们现在可以问一些病人,什么东西可以让他们感觉更舒服?也可以问他们有什么痛苦之处吗?

And of course, we can act on those questions, we can make them more comfortable.

当然,我们可以根据这些问题采取行动,使他们更加舒适。

Communication is the thing that really makes us human.

沟通是真正使我们成为人的东西。

If we can give these patients back the ability to make decisions, I think we can give them back a little piece of their humanity.

如果我们能让这些病人重新拥有做决定的能力,我想我们可以给予他们一小部分的人文关怀。

重点单词   查看全部解释    
consciousness ['kɔnʃəsnis]

想一想再看

n. 意识,知觉,自觉,觉悟

联想记忆
response [ri'spɔns]

想一想再看

n. 回答,响应,反应,答复
n. [宗

联想记忆
humanity [hju:'mæniti]

想一想再看

n. 人类,人性,人道,慈爱,(复)人文学科

 
respond [ris'pɔnd]

想一想再看

v. 回答,答复,反应,反响,响应
n.

联想记忆
activate ['æktiveit]

想一想再看

v. 激活,使活动,起动

联想记忆
communication [kə.mju:ni'keiʃn]

想一想再看

n. 沟通,交流,通讯,传达,通信

 
describe [dis'kraib]

想一想再看

vt. 描述,画(尤指几何图形),说成

联想记忆
awareness [ə'wɛənis]

想一想再看

n. 认识,意识,了解

联想记忆
absolutely ['æbsəlu:tli]

想一想再看

adv. 绝对地,完全地;独立地

 
assess [ə'ses]

想一想再看

v. 估定,评定

 

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