Scientists Used a Hitchcock Thriller to Measure Patients' Consciousness

Alfred Hitchcock, our master of suspense, was incredibly good at manipulating his audience--a fact that has now come in handy for neuroscientists. When they screened a Hitchcock thriller for volunteers in a brain scanner, they found that brain activity of a man who has been in a vegetative state for 16 years was astonishingly similar to that of healthy, conscious people.