How To Talk When You Can't Speak How To Talk When You Can't Speak Communicating with unconscious minds. By Clive Thompson Posted Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005, at 3:33 PM PT This week, Neurology published an unsettling study of two brain-damaged men who are "minimally conscious"—able to breathe on their own but otherwise generally unresponsive. When neuroscientists scanned the patients' brains as they played audiotapes of loved ones, the activity was strikingly normal. The visual cortex of one of the men even lit up in a way that suggested he was visualizing the stories..... If these devices ever do become ready...