Awaken from the Darkness

With the rapid development of brain technology, we are gradually revealing the secret of the brain and consciousness. However, the more we understand, the more confusion arises. What is the vegetative state? Are vegetative patients dead inside? Is brain transplant possible? Could we in the future eventually replace our damaged brain with an artificial one? And essentially, would future technology eventually make our soul immortal?

Keith became vegetative after a car accident seven years ago and he still shows no sign of recovery. Unlike many other vegetative patients, Keith seems to know about his condition and his reaction looks like frustration. He also shows stress when he is uncomfortable or simply when his mother leaves him, by opening his mouth widely. The vegetative state is such a miserable condition because its causes vary from individual to individual and its mechanics is so complicated that it involves the destruction of the brain tissue. So in order to understand what it is, we first need a brief knowledge of how the brain works.

So far, the brain is the most complicated and delicate thing known in the universe. The brain contains billions of neurons (cells which can be either excited or suppressed). Neurons connect with each other through branch like device called synapsis and form a communication network that provides billions and billions possible passages for signals to flow. Our memories, personalities, emotions are bonded to the pattern of the neuron network. Neurons also group together, forming different regions of the brain and each region has its own unique task (vision, hearing...). And the two most important regions are called the Cortex and the Thalamencephalon which is responsible to consciousness. When people are in accidents, their brains suffer great impacts that damage the Cortex and other important components which play important role in cognition and put them in a vegetative state. The vegetative state is defined as a brain condition that preserves the ability to maintain the basic life functions such as respiration, metabolism and heartbeat, but without self-awareness. There are thousands of vegetative patients whose brain waves show no evidence of consciousness and they are usually referred as “Living dead”. Keith may be one of them and his brain wave indicates that he is totally unconscious. However it is very difficult for his mother to believe that everything he does is involuntary, especially when she sees him crying. During an interview, she said that: “He cries, he moans if he is not feeling well. He does everything you and I do except for smile. Sometimes I thought it could have been better for him if he was just killed in the accident." As parent, they could only hope that someday he will wake up. But is there anything we could do as scientists? For patient like keith who suffered great destruction in Cortex, there is not much could be done except for taking great care of them and hoping they could recover themselves. We are still in the dark age of it.

There are cases where patients still have chance. "Can you hear me? If you can please try to answer yes in your brain, so I know you are awake""Yes I can""Excellent! Now I am going to play a familiar music for you and you tell me what it is"Music playing..."This is the national anthem""Fantastic! You are fine. Do you have anything to say to me? Anything you want?""Please get me out" This is a conversation between a doctor and a highly disabled patient whom was once believed vegetative. Doctors discovered that some patient’s brain wave resembles the brain wave of normal people. This means they are definitely thinking of something or having some degree of consciousness. What is going on with them? Why are they acting vegetative? Recent brain researches indicate that many of the vegetative patients whom we thought are "Dead" are actually as live as we are. They are just trapped inside their head because their brain's function of receiving and delivering stimulus is completely destroyed. They can neither feel the world nor respond to it. It is rather worse than the vegetative condition because they are conscious, but in a helpless darkness. The patient in the conversation above is in such condition. The doctor communicates with him using the recent brain wave reconstruction technology designed to translate brain signals into understandable language or imagery. With this device, doctors can understand what patients are thinking, directly through their brain activities. And also inject signals (Visual, acoustical, etc.) into patient’s brain to enable their ability of receiving information from the world. This technology will hopefully help scientists understand better about the vegetative state and meanwhile it reveals a horrible fact that many of these people are conscious and suffering. How are we supposed to get them out?

The safest way is to let them recover themselves, which may take a long time and with no promise. But scientists cannot wait. In fact the purpose for the medical science to exist is to make recovery faster and to use alternative methods to give hope to the person who is hopeless, as what Keith's mother said "I believe the future technology will eventually fix my son's brain and I will try whatever might be helpful to wake him up". Theoretically, there are three things we might be able to do.

The first method is to replace the damaged body parts with artificial ones and even replace the whole body with robotic mechanism. This sounds doable. And in fact there are already technologies for replacing body parts such as artificial hearts. I believe the future technology will allow us to replace most of body parts.

The second method is to remove the brain from the damaged body and put it in a new body. This has never been done before. Will the brain adapt the new body? Are we still the same person as before? Interestingly, this kind of experiment has already performed by philosophers and they refer it as “a brain in the vat” thought experiment in which a surgeon removes a person’s brain from his body, relocating it in a vat filled with life-supporting liquid, and then connects the brain to the body through wires or radio transmitters which transfer identical electrical signals as our nerve systems do. Imagine we are the test subjects in this surgery. Theoretically, we feel just like normal people when we wake up from the surgery, since all the connections between our brain and our body are preserved perfectly, despite the fact that they are physically separated. It is clear enough that our soul is attached to our brain and our body acts as an avatar that represents our existence. If we successfully exchange the body with someone else, we still recognize ourselves as the same person, but in different shape. However it is hard to achieve because the body will reject anything that is exotic.

How about connect the brain to a super computer (Matrix) which creates a virtual world that resembles the real world. Patients could live in the virtual world normally as we are living in the reality. We can even get into that virtual world ourselves to interact with them. This is a fancy idea that could give hope to those who can never wake up. And imagine if it really worked out, we will see hundreds of brains floating in jars, each connected to the Matrix. We approach to one brain and say “Hey. Look! This is my wife. I hope she could live a better life in the computer world”. It could be dramatic but does it change the situation in the real life? No, they are still as dead as before and we are just putting them in a virtual world where they all play the same game with the Matrix. But this is a matter of choice. For example, Tom’s wife Emma became vegetative after an accident. Doctors tell him that there is nothing they could do in the real world but they can only revive her in the Matrix. Tom may choose to do so and go into the Matrix with her, since for him, as long as consciousness is real, so is the world. Who can say that the matrix world is not real and our world is? Maybe we are all living in a dream world that doesn’t “exist”. Our body is a restriction to our mind, but how could we live without a body?

Now let's get crazy. What if we “extract” the soul from the brain and place it in a different container? Maybe future technology would allow us to colon brains. Is the soul going to transfer between two identical brains? If the soul is a function of the brain, then two identical brains will generate the exactly same soul and if we define ourselves as our soul, then does it mean that two identical brains generate the same person? Let’s take another example. Say poor Tom’s wife Emma is vegetative. Doctors tell him that they could colon her perfectly. Everything that she has (Appearance, memory, thought, emotion and so on) will be transferred to the cloned body. And when the cloned Emma wakes up, she will claim that she is Emma and Tom is her husband. She will do everything that the “Old Emma” would do. In this case, will Tom accept his “new” wife? We can also say that Emma is normal and she just wants to duplicate herself. Then there would be two identical Emma(s) with two identical souls. Which would Tom accept? I think most people agree that Tom would choose the first Emma, since it is the original soul that he loves. Maybe we could “download” all the information of the brain into a computer program and live as a computer. Then does it mean that we could be immortal? Does it mean that it is possible for artificial intelligence to have consciousness or soul? Maybe we need to ask ourselves once again that “What is the soul?” we will never be out of questions and confusion. But one gift we are granted as human beings is that we will never let our steps stop at empty spaces and we are always searching for something new, even though it means suffering and pain. The mission for scientists is to explore the land of unknown and experiment with all possible ways in order to make the world better.

Hopefully, in the next generation new brain science technology could help us understand better about the vegetative state and bring many of those “trapped” souls back to our world. And as we understand this universe more, we again ask ourselves “What are we?” “Why are we suffering so much pains while still couldn’t give up a slightest hope?” “What is the ultimate meaning for us to exist in the universe?” As human beings, our understanding is limited by our perception. Perhaps we are all trapped inside something that we don't know and who is going to get us out? The science might be the answer.