INTO THE GRAY ZONE

A Neuroscientist Explores the Border Between Life and Death

By Adrian Owen

304 pp. Scribner. $28.

Before the invention of the mechanical ventilator, there was no plug to pull. Starved of oxygen, victims of severe brain trauma were more likely to die on the emergency room table than to linger in an ethical limbo, with doctors and loved ones agonizing over whether the patient was “really alive.”

By the time Jeff Tremblay, a teenager in Canada, was beaten comatose and airlifted to a hospital in Edmonton, the use of artificial life support had become routine. After three weeks on a ventilator in 1997, he could breathe without assistance, but was that a blessing? He remained locked in what his doctors diagnosed as a vegetative state, unresponsive and seemingly unaware.

Jeff’s father believed otherwise — that his son understood their one-way conversations and was captivated by the movies he wheeled him to at the cineplex. But he couldn’t know for sure. In 2012, 15 years after the assault, he heard of a miracle worker named Adrian Owen, a scientist renowned for scanning the brains of vegetative patients and finding what he believed were signs of consciousness — of minds trapped inside bodies longing to break out.