Well, a little bit. British scientists have devised a way to communicate with people in comas. Or, people we thought were in comas.
By getting them to imagine a physical activity like tennis, they could distinguish between activity in different parts of the brain.
This does push and pull on the meaning of "death". It used to be that if you weren't breathing, you were dead. Then it moved to the heart. It's been in the brain for a while, but we didn't have the tools we have now. Now we can detect brain activity in otherwise completely immobile people.
I wonder if in 100 years we'll have brain scanners good enough for these people to participate in society. Just as our EKG machine now makes the first toilet-paper tube stethoscope seem primitive, will we one day look back on our current technology and chuckle at simpler times?
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