 These studies have the potential to revolutionize the way in which patients with altered states of consciousness are diagnosed and cared for, may have bearing on when life support is terminated, and raise the possibility of allowing patients to have some control over questions regarding their care and end of life decisions (Peterson et al., 2020; Braddock, 2017). This last possibility, while in some ways alleviating some worries about how to treat severely brain-damaged individuals, raises other thorny ethical problems. One of the most pressing is how to deal with questions of competence and informed consent: These are people with severe brain damage, and even when they do appear capable on occasion of understanding and answering questions, there are still questions about whether their abilities are stable, how sophisticated they are, and whether they can competently make decisions about such weighty issues, as well as whether it is really in their interest to remain on life support (Kahane and Savalescu, 2009; Fischer and Truog, 2017). Nonetheless, these methods open up new possibilities for diagnosis and treatment, and for restoring a measure of autonomy and self-determination to people with severe brain damage.