New Tool To Measure Consciousness

bmahersciwriter writes "The line between consciousness and non-consciousness is thin, hard to define and, as the Terri Schiavo case taught us, often rife with ethical quandaries. A research team is developing a tool that will be able to quantify just how conscious a person is, which could prove to be quite useful for research and clinical practices. From the article: 'The metric relies on the idea that consciousness involves widespread communication between different areas of the brain, with each region performing specialized functions. Loss of consciousness during sleep or anaesthesia, or from brain injury, may be caused by the disengagement of brain regions from one another.'"

Comments

Re:Maybe they could use this as a test

[DNS-and-BIND]

No way. No no no no no. The potential for racism is far, far too high. Better to bury this tech deep where nobody will ever find it, and to shame the creators publically so badly that nobody will attempt this sort of thing again.