Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine discovered that the human brain can continue performing surprisingly advanced language tasks even when a person is fully unconscious under general anesthesia. Patients under anesthesia could still process language at a sophisticated level, distinguishing nouns, verbs, and adjectives while listening to stories, and neural activity showed signs of predicting upcoming words before they were heard. The findings, published in Nature, challenge long held assumptions about the relationship between consciousness and cognition. "Our findings show that the brain is far more active and capable during unconsciousness than previously thought," said Dr. Sameer Sheth, professor of neurosurgery at Baylor.
The unconscious brain reads ahead like someone who can't help spoiling their own movie.