One of the Big Theories for the premise of LOST was that the entire series was an elaborate mental dream, a collective dream or a computer simulation. It was not real. It was pure imagination.
Hurley was the perceived imagination engine. He was the one character that actually had vivid, structured and strong imaginary friends. One almost got him to jump off an island cliff, after telling him "none of this is real."
There were other clues that Hurley's mind was in control. The Others lab featured rooms that were based on psychological manipulation to mind control. The lab people were dressed and functioned like the doctors and nurses at his mental institution. Likewise, Hurley was able to move in and out of the institution like he owned the place.
Another strange thing was that Libby was in Hurley's same day rule at the mental hospital, but he did not recognize her when she showed up on the island. Hurley was friendly with everyone at the hospital; just like at the island everyone was his friend. The idea that Libby would fall in love with Hurley is something he could have longed for - - - recall, he lost the clerk young woman to his best friend.
The idea of the "collective coma" was a theory I stated when the series was still running along. It was basically that a series of coma patients were hooked together on a local area network to track brain wave activities. However, the coma patients minds are much more active than the patients outward appearance, so they have created their own virtual world (all of which predates our current AR and virtual reality headsets). Bits and pieces of the patients memories could have been used by Hurley and others to create the island world, the adventures and action which none of patients could fathom because of their medical conditions.
Locke's miracle recovery when he landed on the island is another example of "mind over matter" imagination. Locke believed he was an Australian outback hunter, but the wheelchair made that dream an impossible nightmare. He created his own path and adventure in the island world.
There is also a possibility that the main characters major accomplishments may have been embellished. Jack had a huge daddy complex. He suddenly became a miracle surgeon, to surpass his father's hospital status. But what if he was not an accomplished surgeon - - - but a mental patient who has hallucinations of his dead father. In order to patch things up, he dreams of a way to show his father that he was worthy of his praise.
It is the same motivational theme with his father's abandonment of him. It was something that stuck in Hurley's mind. He turned to eating to cope with the abandonment. It made him unattractive and unmotivated to succeed in life. He dreamed of being a rich and successful man. The only way that could have happened was the miracle win of the lottery - - - which in turn was his curse that he tried to runaway from.
Kate's own daddy issues made her runaway from reality. Her back story was one of manipulation and adventure but she never suffered any true consequences for her crimes. The unbelievably wrong trial was clearly the outcome of a delusional criminal.
All the bits and pieces of the LOST tangential story lines can be easily merged into one big mental simulation of events. An adventure for those who cannot adventure. Those people who wasted their lives without accomplishment, true friends or a path to enlightenment. Yes, LOST had its sci-fi fantasy elements but those can also be created in the imagination of one or more main characters.
Showing posts with label coma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coma. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
Sunday, July 31, 2016
NEW FALSE MEMORIES
In the Boston Globe recently, Linda Rodriguez McRobbie tells the story of a
British man named Alpha Kabeja, who came out of a coma with clear
recollection of memories of things that had never happened.
Kabeja, McRobbie writes, was biking, when he was hit by a van with enough force to knock his brain out of place inside his skull. When he came out of a medically induced coma three weeks later,
McRobbie writes, "doctors told his family he might not remember anything from before the accident, or remember them or who he was, that he might have amnesia." But Kabeja woke up full of memories.
The only problem: None of those things were true!
In the immediate aftermath of the accident, Kabeja clung to his new memories, and his family and friends played along. But there was no pregnancy. There was no private plane. There was no job interview, which Kabeja realized only after he called MI6 and learned their offices had been closed the day of the accident.
But the "memories" weren't totally fantastical — related things had
been happening in Kabeja's life before the accident, leading him to
believe that his subconscious had twisted real pieces of information
into new forms:
In that sense, McRobbie argues, Kabeja's brain was simply going a step further than ours do, every day, when we recall a piece of the past. No autobiographical memory is a fixed, literal record of what really happened; memories are malleable, morphing each time we call them forth, to accommodate new information stored elsewhere in the brain. Sometimes, this means small tweaks; other times, it means we're left with recollections that others might see as outright fabrications. Even people with extraordinary capacities for recall, research has shown, are prone to inadvertently making things up.
Kabeja's false memories then, may have been an attempt to make sense of the long gap when he was unconscious in the hospital — without any real autobiographical memories of that stretch of time, his brain may have simply pulled other memories from elsewhere to fill in the lost weeks. "When you wake up, your brain is trying to reconnect pieces because your brain is trying to recover that sense of you, that sense of memory, that sense of history," Julia Shaw, a memory researcher at London South Bank University, told the Globe. "And in that process of recovery and essentially healing, you can make connections in ways that are fantastical and impossible" — but not so far removed from memory as we might like to think.
If our brain has its own operating program where it writes, stores and re-writes information like a computer hard drive, then any interruption of this normal brain function could lead to dramatic "new false memories" being created to explain one's current situation.
Memories (or in LOST, at times, the loss of the collective memory of the characters) was an ebb and flow in the story lines. Where the flashbacks and backstories really true? Or were they the reconstruction of different bits of information and fantasy caused by brain injuries to the surviving passengers of the plane crash?
Kabeja, McRobbie writes, was biking, when he was hit by a van with enough force to knock his brain out of place inside his skull. When he came out of a medically induced coma three weeks later,
McRobbie writes, "doctors told his family he might not remember anything from before the accident, or remember them or who he was, that he might have amnesia." But Kabeja woke up full of memories.
The only problem: None of those things were true!
In the immediate aftermath of the accident, Kabeja clung to his new memories, and his family and friends played along. But there was no pregnancy. There was no private plane. There was no job interview, which Kabeja realized only after he called MI6 and learned their offices had been closed the day of the accident.
In that sense, McRobbie argues, Kabeja's brain was simply going a step further than ours do, every day, when we recall a piece of the past. No autobiographical memory is a fixed, literal record of what really happened; memories are malleable, morphing each time we call them forth, to accommodate new information stored elsewhere in the brain. Sometimes, this means small tweaks; other times, it means we're left with recollections that others might see as outright fabrications. Even people with extraordinary capacities for recall, research has shown, are prone to inadvertently making things up.
Kabeja's false memories then, may have been an attempt to make sense of the long gap when he was unconscious in the hospital — without any real autobiographical memories of that stretch of time, his brain may have simply pulled other memories from elsewhere to fill in the lost weeks. "When you wake up, your brain is trying to reconnect pieces because your brain is trying to recover that sense of you, that sense of memory, that sense of history," Julia Shaw, a memory researcher at London South Bank University, told the Globe. "And in that process of recovery and essentially healing, you can make connections in ways that are fantastical and impossible" — but not so far removed from memory as we might like to think.
If our brain has its own operating program where it writes, stores and re-writes information like a computer hard drive, then any interruption of this normal brain function could lead to dramatic "new false memories" being created to explain one's current situation.
Memories (or in LOST, at times, the loss of the collective memory of the characters) was an ebb and flow in the story lines. Where the flashbacks and backstories really true? Or were they the reconstruction of different bits of information and fantasy caused by brain injuries to the surviving passengers of the plane crash?
Friday, July 3, 2015
DO COMA PATIENTS DREAM?
Science is trying to figure out how the conscious and subconscious mind works. Several studies have tried to use EEG monitors to pinpoint brain activity in normal resting individuals, sleeping individuals and people in a coma. The results have been inconclusive. Brain activity is hard to measure on a quantitative level.
People in comas are, to the best of our knowledge (at least in most cases) incapable of entering REM sleep, and very likely are not going to have any kind of dream or nightmare. This is because the brain system required to have a dream are in fact the same systems required while you're awake - to the point that your visual cortex will light up in an FMRI during a dream - it does not light up during a coma. Now, in contrast, there are some patients who aren't in a coma but rather an immobile state (imagine the computer's on, but the monitor's disconnected) - these patients have brain activity and can even, for instance, picture a tennis game if it's described to them. This state would likely allow for dreams, and if so, nightmares. However, if they did, they would likely dream just like we do.
It is also incorrect to assume that we only end nightmares by waking up. The sudden shock of awakening makes us remember the dream more clearly. Most dreams are finite because the neurological triggers for them are transient. We dream, research indicates, to solve problems. To walk through the aspects of our day that were unresolved or had left incomplete traces that needed to be handled. Nightmares similarly give us a chance to practice at our fears - however, our brain is unlikely to keep giving us practice after a certain amount of time.
In our non-waking state, there are two factors at work: dreams to solve problems and nightmares to practice facing our fears.
That seems to be a mission statement for LOST.
Take Hurley for example. He had a fear of rejection, including from his father and later with women. He also had an active imagination to try to solve his problems such as money, work and body imagine. In the complexity of Hurley's semi-conscious sleep state, he could have had both problem solving dreams and fear nightmares overlapping to create his island adventure.
Because what happens when Hurley "awakens" from his island time? He is in the sideways world with a lovely woman, Libby, and his friends. This could still be part of his dream-nightmare resolution. For Hurley learns through his island time to be responsible, to not blame curses or bad luck for his issues with his parents, work or love life, and that by just being himself he can attain his goals of a romantic life and lasting friendships.
If that is the message of LOST, it is a good one.
People in comas are, to the best of our knowledge (at least in most cases) incapable of entering REM sleep, and very likely are not going to have any kind of dream or nightmare. This is because the brain system required to have a dream are in fact the same systems required while you're awake - to the point that your visual cortex will light up in an FMRI during a dream - it does not light up during a coma. Now, in contrast, there are some patients who aren't in a coma but rather an immobile state (imagine the computer's on, but the monitor's disconnected) - these patients have brain activity and can even, for instance, picture a tennis game if it's described to them. This state would likely allow for dreams, and if so, nightmares. However, if they did, they would likely dream just like we do.
It is also incorrect to assume that we only end nightmares by waking up. The sudden shock of awakening makes us remember the dream more clearly. Most dreams are finite because the neurological triggers for them are transient. We dream, research indicates, to solve problems. To walk through the aspects of our day that were unresolved or had left incomplete traces that needed to be handled. Nightmares similarly give us a chance to practice at our fears - however, our brain is unlikely to keep giving us practice after a certain amount of time.
In our non-waking state, there are two factors at work: dreams to solve problems and nightmares to practice facing our fears.
That seems to be a mission statement for LOST.
Take Hurley for example. He had a fear of rejection, including from his father and later with women. He also had an active imagination to try to solve his problems such as money, work and body imagine. In the complexity of Hurley's semi-conscious sleep state, he could have had both problem solving dreams and fear nightmares overlapping to create his island adventure.
Because what happens when Hurley "awakens" from his island time? He is in the sideways world with a lovely woman, Libby, and his friends. This could still be part of his dream-nightmare resolution. For Hurley learns through his island time to be responsible, to not blame curses or bad luck for his issues with his parents, work or love life, and that by just being himself he can attain his goals of a romantic life and lasting friendships.
If that is the message of LOST, it is a good one.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
DEAD TWICE
The British newspaper, The Independent, reported the death experiences of a man who "died" twice, once after a motorcycle accident and once after a drug overdose. In both cases, his experience was exactly the same.
On the sensation of death itself:
"I had no idea, it was just black emptiness. No thoughts, no consciousness, nothing.
"Both times I was just "not there". It was just all black. I would describe it as when you take a nap. A short nap with no dream, you wake up and it feels like you've been sleeping a long time, when in reality it's only been about 15 minutes.
"The only reason I know is because the doctors were obligated to share the information with me. "So yeah, you were dead for a couple of minutes, just FYI" hahaha.
"So if the doctors wouldn't have said anything I would've just thought that I took a dreamless nap."
On the experience itself:
"It was definitely not just a gap. Much like a dreamless nap, you don't just wake up and feel like time just jumped ahead. You know that you've been asleep for a while. At the same time, you can't really remember experiencing anything at all, unless you had a dream.
"So yes and no. I experienced something, and that something was nothing."
On his religious viewpoint and his experiences being dead:
"I have always been an atheist, but I have always had a part of me that hoped there was a God or Heaven or something greater than us. I mean, who wouldn't want there to be a Heaven?
"I am still an atheist, and now I know that there is no such thing as God or Heaven. At least not for me. My reasoning behind that is no God would ever put a person and family through such a experience.
"I am an Atheist, and always will be. But I believe that your belief is your belief. The only thing we can share is our own experiences and let people make up their own mind. People need to stop forcing their own beliefs onto others."
On death itself:
"Death is death. Once your dead, that's it, it's over."
This is an report of one person, whose statements cannot be confirmed by science. However, when dealing with such experiences in the past, medical providers have been told by other "dead" patients of seeing a white light and a sense of being floating upward.
It may be a question of subconscious belief memories kicking in as a defense mechanism.
But if this man's account is taken as fact, then the premise of LOST, with its life and death symbolism such as the sideways world, is totally false. It would bring the premise of the series more in line with the dream state or coma theories, where the brain is still processing information to the conscious self.
On the sensation of death itself:
"I had no idea, it was just black emptiness. No thoughts, no consciousness, nothing.
"Both times I was just "not there". It was just all black. I would describe it as when you take a nap. A short nap with no dream, you wake up and it feels like you've been sleeping a long time, when in reality it's only been about 15 minutes.
"The only reason I know is because the doctors were obligated to share the information with me. "So yeah, you were dead for a couple of minutes, just FYI" hahaha.
"So if the doctors wouldn't have said anything I would've just thought that I took a dreamless nap."
On the experience itself:
"It was definitely not just a gap. Much like a dreamless nap, you don't just wake up and feel like time just jumped ahead. You know that you've been asleep for a while. At the same time, you can't really remember experiencing anything at all, unless you had a dream.
"So yes and no. I experienced something, and that something was nothing."
On his religious viewpoint and his experiences being dead:
"I have always been an atheist, but I have always had a part of me that hoped there was a God or Heaven or something greater than us. I mean, who wouldn't want there to be a Heaven?
"I am still an atheist, and now I know that there is no such thing as God or Heaven. At least not for me. My reasoning behind that is no God would ever put a person and family through such a experience.
"I am an Atheist, and always will be. But I believe that your belief is your belief. The only thing we can share is our own experiences and let people make up their own mind. People need to stop forcing their own beliefs onto others."
On death itself:
"Death is death. Once your dead, that's it, it's over."
This is an report of one person, whose statements cannot be confirmed by science. However, when dealing with such experiences in the past, medical providers have been told by other "dead" patients of seeing a white light and a sense of being floating upward.
It may be a question of subconscious belief memories kicking in as a defense mechanism.
But if this man's account is taken as fact, then the premise of LOST, with its life and death symbolism such as the sideways world, is totally false. It would bring the premise of the series more in line with the dream state or coma theories, where the brain is still processing information to the conscious self.
Saturday, February 21, 2015
ALL IN HIS HEAD
Some new recent fan posts follow an old theory, that the premise of LOST was all inside the head of a character. In this latest versions, it was Jack's mind.
This theory infuses Jack's background. We first met Jack in season one, he was a doctor with an alcoholic father and some "daddy issues." As we learned more about his background, we started to learn about his relationship and commitment issues, along with suicidal tendencies and deep regret for mistakes made, often made in the operating room. The question is whether these dark emotions and mental illness are first and foremost, or secondary to the pressures of being the son of a famous doctor. If it was the former, Jack may never have been a physician; the "miracles" of his skills were all fantasy.
As another flavor on this theory, the entire island experience was Jack trying to work out his personality issues by his subconscious creating characters to "work things through." Many scientists believe that humans dream for a reason; it is the down time that frees up the brain to run a series of calculations and scenarios of real life issues so the waking person has some idea how to handle them.
Each series character represents a different part of Jack's personality. For example Kate could have been the part of him that wanted to be strong and kind, but couldn't let go of his past. John Locke could have been the part of him that wanted to stop being told what or how to do things, and was just downright angry. Shannon could have been the part of him that wanted to be taken care of, and so on.
As he worked through different issues and overcame challenges on the island, the "parts of him" started to die. When he realized that his father was kind of at the center of everything, the island Jack (subconscious) died, because he had finished what needed to be done, and alternate Jack (reality) met up at the church with everybody else. Jack being "dead" in the sideways church was "awakening," or leaving the dream state. For one last time, his subconscious memories joined together since Jack's brain had figured out how to cope with his problems. The island was his dream state making sense of what was happening, and the other places and adventures were a way of working through his problems. At the end when it was between MIB and Jacob (Good/Bad) He had a hard decision and realized that he needed to choose to be the guardian of the island, which represents real Jack taking control of his own life. When he did even though he would lose everybody close to him (even though they were parts of him) he was ready to move on. So in conclusion, each character was a part of him. When he worked through the problems represented by that person, they would die. As it narrowed down to the harder stuff ( Oceanic 6) he had harder decisions. When he made the right choices and worked through his problems, he was alone, but that meant he had figured out that aspect of his problems.
A different take on the psychological aspect of Jack's dream series is that the method of his unconsciousness could have been from an actual plane crash. Under this theory, the whole series of events on LOST happened inside Jack’s head. He was in a plane crash, got rescued, taken to a hospital where he spent some time in a coma. The Island was his coma dream.
When the show used terms like "constant" and "projection" it was a clue to describe how Jack’s mind formed the surrounding imaginary environment. A projection is something that Jack experienced in his life, some strong emotion for example, and then it appeared/usually reiterated in his dream, while a constant is some part of the physical environment that imposed itself into the dream world. Like for example, the phone starts ringing while you are asleep, and this appears in your dream in some abrupt occurrence. It is similar to a constant in LOST, in a sense that it is something that exists in both worlds - inside and outside of the dream. A link. Both are just different instances of something called “dream incorporation.”
Dreams objectify that which is subjective, they visualize that which is invisible, they transform the abstract into the concrete, and they make conscious that which is unconscious. They come from the most archaic alcoves of the mind as well as from the peripheral levels of waking consciousness. Dreams are the kaleidoscope of the mind.
Further, there were clear clues that the show was about "illusions." There was a boat in the O6 marina by that name, when Jack had to make (and convince the desperate elements of his own personality) to go back deep into his subconscious ("go back to the island) in order find his final answers. Remember, it never made any sense that they were going back to "save" the people they left behind, because by their own experience, the island disappeared and everyone was dead. People represented as dream characters can always come back to life, inside one's head. That is what happened when Jack "returned" to the island.
The dream theory (no matter whose character is the center piece) is one of the lasting fan theories of LOST. It helps explain a lot of the inconsistent mysteries and odd tangents of the show, including the Ending.
This theory infuses Jack's background. We first met Jack in season one, he was a doctor with an alcoholic father and some "daddy issues." As we learned more about his background, we started to learn about his relationship and commitment issues, along with suicidal tendencies and deep regret for mistakes made, often made in the operating room. The question is whether these dark emotions and mental illness are first and foremost, or secondary to the pressures of being the son of a famous doctor. If it was the former, Jack may never have been a physician; the "miracles" of his skills were all fantasy.
As another flavor on this theory, the entire island experience was Jack trying to work out his personality issues by his subconscious creating characters to "work things through." Many scientists believe that humans dream for a reason; it is the down time that frees up the brain to run a series of calculations and scenarios of real life issues so the waking person has some idea how to handle them.
Each series character represents a different part of Jack's personality. For example Kate could have been the part of him that wanted to be strong and kind, but couldn't let go of his past. John Locke could have been the part of him that wanted to stop being told what or how to do things, and was just downright angry. Shannon could have been the part of him that wanted to be taken care of, and so on.
As he worked through different issues and overcame challenges on the island, the "parts of him" started to die. When he realized that his father was kind of at the center of everything, the island Jack (subconscious) died, because he had finished what needed to be done, and alternate Jack (reality) met up at the church with everybody else. Jack being "dead" in the sideways church was "awakening," or leaving the dream state. For one last time, his subconscious memories joined together since Jack's brain had figured out how to cope with his problems. The island was his dream state making sense of what was happening, and the other places and adventures were a way of working through his problems. At the end when it was between MIB and Jacob (Good/Bad) He had a hard decision and realized that he needed to choose to be the guardian of the island, which represents real Jack taking control of his own life. When he did even though he would lose everybody close to him (even though they were parts of him) he was ready to move on. So in conclusion, each character was a part of him. When he worked through the problems represented by that person, they would die. As it narrowed down to the harder stuff ( Oceanic 6) he had harder decisions. When he made the right choices and worked through his problems, he was alone, but that meant he had figured out that aspect of his problems.
A different take on the psychological aspect of Jack's dream series is that the method of his unconsciousness could have been from an actual plane crash. Under this theory, the whole series of events on LOST happened inside Jack’s head. He was in a plane crash, got rescued, taken to a hospital where he spent some time in a coma. The Island was his coma dream.
When the show used terms like "constant" and "projection" it was a clue to describe how Jack’s mind formed the surrounding imaginary environment. A projection is something that Jack experienced in his life, some strong emotion for example, and then it appeared/usually reiterated in his dream, while a constant is some part of the physical environment that imposed itself into the dream world. Like for example, the phone starts ringing while you are asleep, and this appears in your dream in some abrupt occurrence. It is similar to a constant in LOST, in a sense that it is something that exists in both worlds - inside and outside of the dream. A link. Both are just different instances of something called “dream incorporation.”
Dreams objectify that which is subjective, they visualize that which is invisible, they transform the abstract into the concrete, and they make conscious that which is unconscious. They come from the most archaic alcoves of the mind as well as from the peripheral levels of waking consciousness. Dreams are the kaleidoscope of the mind.
Further, there were clear clues that the show was about "illusions." There was a boat in the O6 marina by that name, when Jack had to make (and convince the desperate elements of his own personality) to go back deep into his subconscious ("go back to the island) in order find his final answers. Remember, it never made any sense that they were going back to "save" the people they left behind, because by their own experience, the island disappeared and everyone was dead. People represented as dream characters can always come back to life, inside one's head. That is what happened when Jack "returned" to the island.
The dream theory (no matter whose character is the center piece) is one of the lasting fan theories of LOST. It helps explain a lot of the inconsistent mysteries and odd tangents of the show, including the Ending.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH
The BBC recently had an article about the scientific research conducted with severely vegetative patients. The most revealing aspect of the article (and study) was that a patient in a deep coma awoke to tell the medical community what she experienced in her vegetative state. It was totally different than what medical science perceived was happening inside the brain of an unconscious patient.
The problem is that the scientific definition of “death” remains as unresolved as the definition of “consciousness”. Being alive is no longer linked to having a beating heart, explains Owen. If I have an artificial heart, am I dead? If you are on a life-support machine, are you dead? Is a failure to sustain independent life a reasonable definition of death? No, otherwise we would all be “dead” in the nine months before birth.
The issue becomes murkier when we consider those trapped in the twilight worlds between normal life and death – from those who slip in and out of awareness, who are trapped in a ‘minimally conscious state’, to those who are severely impaired in a vegetative state or a coma. These patients first appeared in the wake of the development of the artificial respirator during the 1950s in Denmark, an invention that redefined the end of life in terms of the idea of brain death and created the specialty of intensive care, in which unresponsive and comatose patients who seemed unable to wake up again were written off as “vegetables” or “jellyfish”. As is always the case when treating patients, definitions are critical: understanding the chances of recovery, the benefits of treatments and so on all depend on a precise diagnosis.
In the 1960s, neurologist Fred Plum in New York and neurosurgeon Bryan Jennett in Glasgow carried out pioneering work to understand and categorise disorders of consciousness. Plum coined the term “locked-in syndrome”, in which a patient is aware and awake but cannot move or talk. With Plum, Jennett devised the Glasgow Coma Scale to rate the depth of coma, and Jennett followed up with the Glasgow Outcome Scale to weigh up the extent of recovery, from death to mild disability. Together they adopted the term “persistent vegetative state” for patients who, they wrote, “have periods of wakefulness when their eyes are open and move; their responsiveness is limited to primitive postural and reflex movements of the limbs, and they never speak.”
In 2002, Jennett was among a group of neurologists who chose the phrase “minimally conscious” to describe those who are sometimes awake and partly aware, who show erratic signs of consciousness so that at one time they might be able to follow a simple instruction and another they might not. Even today, however, we’re still arguing over who is conscious and who isn’t.
Kate Bainbridge, a 26-year-old schoolteacher, lapsed into a coma three days after she came down with a flu-like illness. Her brain became inflamed, along with the primitive region atop the spinal cord, the brain stem, which rules the sleep cycle. A few weeks after her infection had cleared, Kate awoke from the coma but was diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. Luckily, the intensive care doctor responsible for her, David Menon, was also a Principal Investigator at the newly opened Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre in Cambridge, where one Adrian Owen then worked.
In 1997, four months after she had been diagnosed as vegetative, Kate became the first patient in a vegetative state to be studied by the Cambridge group. The results, published in 1998, were unexpected and extraordinary. Not only did Kate react to faces: but her brain responses were indistinguishable from those of healthy volunteers. Her scans revealed a splash of red, marking brain activity at the back of her brain, in a part called the fusiform gyrus, which helps recognize faces. Kate became the first such patient in whom sophisticated brain imaging (in this case PET) revealed “covert cognition”. Of course, whether that response was a reflex or a signal of consciousness was, at the time, a matter of debate.
The results were of huge significance for science but also for Kate and her parents. “The existence of preserved cognitive processing removed the nihilism that pervaded the management of such patients in general, and supported a decision to continue to treat Kate aggressively,” recalls Menon.
Kate eventually surfaced from her ordeal, six months after the initial diagnosis. “They said I could not feel pain,” she says. “They were so wrong.” Sometimes she’d cry out, but the nurses thought it was just a reflex. She felt abandoned and helpless. Hospital staff had no idea how much she suffered in their care. Kate found physiotherapy scary: nurses never explained what they were doing to her. She was terrified when they removed mucus from her lungs. “I can’t tell you how frightening it was, especially suction through the mouth,” she has written. At one point, her pain and despair became so much that she tried to snuff out her life by holding her breath. “I could not stop my nose from breathing, so it did not work. My body did not seem to want to die.”
Kate says her recovery was not so much like turning a light on but a gradual awakening. It took her five months before she could smile. By then she had lost her job, her sense of smell and taste, and much of what might have been a normal future. Now back with her parents, Kate is still very disabled and needs a wheelchair. Twelve years after her illness, she started to talk again and, though still angry about the way she was treated when she was at her most vulnerable, she remains grateful to those who helped her mind to escape.
In applying this real life coma story to LOST, there is a theme of "gradual awakening" of the dead in the sideways world to the events of their recent past (i.e. the plane crash). A person in a coma, or in a state between life and death, still can perceive the world around them - - - and still have strong emotions like pain and anxiety. For those who think most people pass quietly in their sleep may have to rethink that position. With her mind still active, the coma victim is trapped inside her own head. And what was she thinking about? Escape. What was the most driving force for everyone on the island, including the smoke monster? Escape. It was the inability of the coma patient to communicate with the outside world that led to frustration and more pain. Likewise, fans continually barked at the television screens when LOST survivors continually failed to communicate with each other, or ask the simple, common sense questions to get answers.
Many of the same elements of the coma patient study were embedded into the LOST story. It gives those fan theories about mental or coma patients more real scientific evidence to support their viewpoint of the series.
The problem is that the scientific definition of “death” remains as unresolved as the definition of “consciousness”. Being alive is no longer linked to having a beating heart, explains Owen. If I have an artificial heart, am I dead? If you are on a life-support machine, are you dead? Is a failure to sustain independent life a reasonable definition of death? No, otherwise we would all be “dead” in the nine months before birth.
The issue becomes murkier when we consider those trapped in the twilight worlds between normal life and death – from those who slip in and out of awareness, who are trapped in a ‘minimally conscious state’, to those who are severely impaired in a vegetative state or a coma. These patients first appeared in the wake of the development of the artificial respirator during the 1950s in Denmark, an invention that redefined the end of life in terms of the idea of brain death and created the specialty of intensive care, in which unresponsive and comatose patients who seemed unable to wake up again were written off as “vegetables” or “jellyfish”. As is always the case when treating patients, definitions are critical: understanding the chances of recovery, the benefits of treatments and so on all depend on a precise diagnosis.
In the 1960s, neurologist Fred Plum in New York and neurosurgeon Bryan Jennett in Glasgow carried out pioneering work to understand and categorise disorders of consciousness. Plum coined the term “locked-in syndrome”, in which a patient is aware and awake but cannot move or talk. With Plum, Jennett devised the Glasgow Coma Scale to rate the depth of coma, and Jennett followed up with the Glasgow Outcome Scale to weigh up the extent of recovery, from death to mild disability. Together they adopted the term “persistent vegetative state” for patients who, they wrote, “have periods of wakefulness when their eyes are open and move; their responsiveness is limited to primitive postural and reflex movements of the limbs, and they never speak.”
In 2002, Jennett was among a group of neurologists who chose the phrase “minimally conscious” to describe those who are sometimes awake and partly aware, who show erratic signs of consciousness so that at one time they might be able to follow a simple instruction and another they might not. Even today, however, we’re still arguing over who is conscious and who isn’t.
Kate Bainbridge, a 26-year-old schoolteacher, lapsed into a coma three days after she came down with a flu-like illness. Her brain became inflamed, along with the primitive region atop the spinal cord, the brain stem, which rules the sleep cycle. A few weeks after her infection had cleared, Kate awoke from the coma but was diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. Luckily, the intensive care doctor responsible for her, David Menon, was also a Principal Investigator at the newly opened Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre in Cambridge, where one Adrian Owen then worked.
In 1997, four months after she had been diagnosed as vegetative, Kate became the first patient in a vegetative state to be studied by the Cambridge group. The results, published in 1998, were unexpected and extraordinary. Not only did Kate react to faces: but her brain responses were indistinguishable from those of healthy volunteers. Her scans revealed a splash of red, marking brain activity at the back of her brain, in a part called the fusiform gyrus, which helps recognize faces. Kate became the first such patient in whom sophisticated brain imaging (in this case PET) revealed “covert cognition”. Of course, whether that response was a reflex or a signal of consciousness was, at the time, a matter of debate.
The results were of huge significance for science but also for Kate and her parents. “The existence of preserved cognitive processing removed the nihilism that pervaded the management of such patients in general, and supported a decision to continue to treat Kate aggressively,” recalls Menon.
Kate eventually surfaced from her ordeal, six months after the initial diagnosis. “They said I could not feel pain,” she says. “They were so wrong.” Sometimes she’d cry out, but the nurses thought it was just a reflex. She felt abandoned and helpless. Hospital staff had no idea how much she suffered in their care. Kate found physiotherapy scary: nurses never explained what they were doing to her. She was terrified when they removed mucus from her lungs. “I can’t tell you how frightening it was, especially suction through the mouth,” she has written. At one point, her pain and despair became so much that she tried to snuff out her life by holding her breath. “I could not stop my nose from breathing, so it did not work. My body did not seem to want to die.”
Kate says her recovery was not so much like turning a light on but a gradual awakening. It took her five months before she could smile. By then she had lost her job, her sense of smell and taste, and much of what might have been a normal future. Now back with her parents, Kate is still very disabled and needs a wheelchair. Twelve years after her illness, she started to talk again and, though still angry about the way she was treated when she was at her most vulnerable, she remains grateful to those who helped her mind to escape.
In applying this real life coma story to LOST, there is a theme of "gradual awakening" of the dead in the sideways world to the events of their recent past (i.e. the plane crash). A person in a coma, or in a state between life and death, still can perceive the world around them - - - and still have strong emotions like pain and anxiety. For those who think most people pass quietly in their sleep may have to rethink that position. With her mind still active, the coma victim is trapped inside her own head. And what was she thinking about? Escape. What was the most driving force for everyone on the island, including the smoke monster? Escape. It was the inability of the coma patient to communicate with the outside world that led to frustration and more pain. Likewise, fans continually barked at the television screens when LOST survivors continually failed to communicate with each other, or ask the simple, common sense questions to get answers.
Many of the same elements of the coma patient study were embedded into the LOST story. It gives those fan theories about mental or coma patients more real scientific evidence to support their viewpoint of the series.
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