单选题 The inner voice of people who appear unconscious can now be heard. For the first time, researchers have struck up a conversation with a man diagnosed as being in a vegetative (植物的) state. All they had to do was monitor how his brain responded to specific questions.
"They can now have some involvement in their destiny," says Adrian Owen of the University of Cambridge, who led the team doing the work.
In an earlier experiment, Owen's team asked a woman previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state to picture herself carrying out one of two different activities. The resulting brain activity suggested she understood the commands and was therefore conscious.
Now Owen's team has taken the idea a step further. A man also diagnosed with VS was able to answer yes and no to specific questions by imagining himself engaging in the same activities.
The results suggest that it is possible to give a degree of choice to some people who have no other way of communicating with the outside world. "We are not just showing they are conscious, we are giving them a voice and a way to communicate," says neurologist (神经病学家) Steven Laureys of the University of Liege in Belgium, Owen's partner.
Doctors traditionally base these diagnoses on how someone behaves: for example, whether they can glance in different directions in response to questions. The new results show that you don't need behavioural indications to identify awareness and even a degree of cognitive proficiency. All you need to do is tap into brain activity directly.
The work "changes everything", says Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, who is carrying out similar work on patients with consciousness disorders. "Knowing that someone could persist in a state like this and not show evidence of the fact that they can answer yes/no questions should he extremely disturbing to our practice."
One of the most difficult questions you might want to ask someone is whether they want to carry on living. But as Owen and Laureys point out, the scientific, legal and ethical challenges for doctors asking such questions are formidable.

单选题 "They" in the second paragraph can be replaced by "______".

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 该段中的they和their的所指相同，根据their destiny推断they应该是指“植物状态的病人”。以前人们认为植物人没有意识，可是现在研究发现植物人是有意识的，是可以参与自己命运的，因此，A是最合理的选项。
[点睛] 上一段中讲到植物人的心声可以被听到，以及他们第一次与研究人员进行了“交谈”，由此及全文内容知植物人是研究者们的研究对象，那么，此句中They无疑指植物人。

单选题 What did Owen's team find about the woman in the first experiment?

单选题 Owen's team can communicate with people in a VS by ______.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[解析] 该句指出研究人员为植物人提供选择，而句中的no other way表明植物人作出的选择是他们和外界交流的唯一途径，由此可见，本题应选C。
[点睛] 本文的研究认为，植物人是能思考的，但他们并不因为有思维而能与外界沟通，因此A不正确；第5段第2句提到的giving them a voice只是一种比喻的说法，植物人并不能真正地说话，因此，B不正确；如果仅仅为植物人提供一些活动，得到的结果只是证明了植物人有大脑的意识，第3段描述的试验过程就是这样。只有给他们提供二选一的问题，研究人员才能通过他们的选择与其沟通(如第4段描述的进一步实验)，因此，D也不正确。

单选题 Nicholas Schiff looks at the findings by Owen's team with __

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】[解析] 该句开头的The work "changes everything" 表明Nicholas Schiff对结果持肯定的态度，他认为这个研究结果产生了重大的影响，在所有选项中，只有B表示肯定的态度。
[点睛] 本题最具干扰性的是D。第7段最后一句末尾提到了disturbing一词，很容易让考生误以为Nicholas Schiff对Owen的团队的研究成果感到困扰，但原文是说在Owen的团队的研究成果出来前，Nicholas Schiff对找不到证据证明病人的意识状态感到困扰，由此可见，D不正确。

单选题 Owen and Lanreys would most probably agree that______.

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】[解析] 该句表明Owen and Laureys认为如果医生询问病人他们是否想活下去，医生将在科学、法律和伦理等方面面临挑战，而这种挑战极为强大，几乎不可战胜，由此推断，Owen and Laureys都认为医生不该提出这样的问题，因此，本题应选D。
[点睛] 原文并没有讨论病人的生死该由医生决定，还是病人自己决定；病人该选择放弃，还是选择生存下去。因此，A和C均不正确。原文没有提及植物人应该享有法定权利的问题，因此，B是用原文中的legal一词随意拼凑的选项，无原文依据。