What if patients diagnosed as vegetative are actually conscious but trapped , unable to signal their awareness through any behavioral channel? Adrian Owen describes how fMRI and EEG are revealing hidden minds and opening new paths to communication. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Adrian Owen's research confronts one of the most unsettling problems in clinical neuroscience: the possibility that a significant minority of patients diagnosed as vegetative are in fact aware, experiencing the world much as we do, but completely unable to demonstrate it. Using fMRI, Owen and his team have identified patients who can reliably modulate their brain activity on command , imagining playing tennis to activate premotor cortex, or imagining navigating their home to activate parahippocampal regions , despite showing no beha ...