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 The point on differing valuations of quality of life in people with locked in syndrome as compared to their loved ones and the potential impact of that difference (in terms of both how the family of the individual treat him or her and in the medical treatment that they potentially may or may not provide but I do not think that those differences are the result of evidence that social contact is not an important component of a fulfilling life.  Obviously it was impossible to determine how satisfied locked in patients are with their life prior to providing them with a means of communication and after that has been accomplished it is possible for the patient to resume social contact.  I do think that self-determination and self-control are a very important part of the appeal of things like “thetaville” (or lucid dreaming or whatever) and that the appeal of fantasy over reality is based very much in the ability to choose between the two.  Of course locked in individuals would still have to face reality at times, even if they were able to satisfy themselves with fantasy, and that would be a very tough transition to bear.

            Moving back to the woman who used the experience of having a stroke to create a philosophy based around the satisfaction gained by putting oneself in either the right or left mind while I don’t consider her approach to be especially scientific or a philosophy that appeals to me as an individual but I don’t think it really reflects at all upon more generally accepted neuroscience.  Beyond the recent evidence mentioned in class discussion that the compartmentalized view of the brain that the idea of “right brained consciousness” depends upon is not accurate the theory depends upon immeasurable and non-quantifiable ideas.  It is possible that (though again I don’t know how you would move consciousness about the brain considering that I don’t consider it separate from the brain as a whole and it’s most likely the result of a number of processes all over the brain) if you were somehow to move your consciousness to the right brain you might experience all of your cells, but I have no idea how that could be measured.  And if the theory is impossible to test it is not science, a scientific theory may not be provable across all possible circumstances, but is must be possible to disprove.  And this cannot.  Though I imagine that public speaking has helped in this case with the recovery of speech, which is certainly a plus.