Into the Grey Zone: A Neuroscientist Explores the Border Between Life and Death - Tapa dura

A fascinating and accessible account of cutting-edge science, and of those whose lives have been altered in an instant ...This book will be required reading for anyone sitting by a loved one’s bedside, caregivers, doctors, ethicists, lawyers and philosophers. (Sunday Times)

Astonishing ... ground-breaking research ... Science as an act of adventure, and also rescue. Owen is intrepid, and vulnerable. It never feels less than miraculous when he pulls a fellow human out of the dark. (The Times)

A fascinating and highly readable book ... gripping and moving ... Owen's work raises many more questions than it answers. (New Statesman)

[A] fascinating memoir... Into The Grey Zone reads like a thriller... Owen's enthusiasm for his science crackles from the pages. His determination to fight for the scores of voiceless grey-zone patients he encounters, to prove they're 'thinking, feeling people' is hugely thought-provoking and deeply moving. (Mail on Sunday)

Riveting and strangely uplifting ... Owen's experiences with grey-zone patients and their families, he said, had changed his life. Reading the book, I can see why: the testimonies of people who have returned from the grey zone evoke the mysteries of consciousness and identity with tremendous power. (Joshua Rothman The New Yorker, 'What We're Reading This Summer')

Meshing memoir with scientific explication, Owen reveals how functional magnetic resonance imaging can probe the deep space of trapped minds. It's a riveting read, from the march of technology and tests for neural responses – such as imagining playing a game of tennis – to extraordinary personal accounts of the 'grey zone' by partially recovered patients. (Nature magazine)

Into the Grey Zone is a personal story of the adventure of life and science, told with a zest that bubbles off the page... a deeply moving book, told through the stories of the real patients, their families, their histories, their successes and failures... It is a book to be read at a single sitting, mixing tragedies with hope. In the words of the first ever patient, Kate – one of those who finally came back from the grey zone: 'I was unresponsive and looked hopeless, but the scans showed people I was in there. It was like magic. It found me.' (Professor John Duncan (University of Cambridge) The Psychologist)

Fascinating . . . With remarkable clarity, Owen punctuates his findings with concise dispatches on the human condition and the disparities between what is considered quality of life and what some consider an inhumane, dysfunctional existence . . . A striking scientific journey that draws hopeful attention to how the brain reacts, restores, and perseveres despite grave injury. (Kirkus Reviews)

Vivid, emotional, and thought-provoking . . . Owen's story of horror and hope will long haunt readers. (Publishers Weekly)

A fantastically thought provoking book that will cause you to question the most essential ideas you have about what it means to be alive, and what it means to be you. Adrian Owen is not just one of our top scientists, but a great storyteller. (Daniel J. Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music and The Organized Mind)

Dr Adrian Owen is a British neuroscientist. He is currently the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and imaging at The Brain and Mind Institute, Western University, Canada. He has worked at the Cognitive Neuroscience Unit at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University and the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge. His work has appeared in many of the world's most prestigious scientific and medical journals: Science, Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. His research has been widely discussed on BBC News, Channel 4 News, ITN, SKY, and Radio 4. Owenlab.org.