Ryan Joy (atxryan)

The slow-motion effect may be your brain's way of making sense of all this extra information. "When you read that back out," David says, "the experience feels like it must have taken a very long time." But really, in a crisis s…

The slow-motion effect may be your brain's way of making sense of all this extra information. "When you read that back out," David says, "the experience feels like it must have taken a very long time." But really, in a crisis s…

"We found that blood flow around this region increased when you had a difficult decision to make and you successfully rejected the default option," Fleming says.

Here's the cool part: It's the same region that some doctors are hitting with "deep brain stimulation," a treatment that's enabling some Parkinson's patients overcome the rigidity and walking problems that are a part of that illness.This might not be a coincidence, Fleming suggests.

The findings open the possibility that some of these patients may be able to participate in decisions about their medical care, though a number of scientific, ethical, and legal issues will need to be discussed before taking this step. In the recent experiment, for example, scientists did not ask the patient whether he was in pain, instead sticking to factual questions with answers they could later confirm. "Before we tackle important issues such as pain, treatment, end of life, and so on, there are a lot of things we need to discuss among the medical community as whole," says Laureys.