People in a vegetative state may be far more aware than was once thought, Sarah Zhang reports in a recent feature. “In some extraordinary patients, the line between conscious and unconscious is more permeable than one might expect,” she writes. As scientists continue to try to comprehend the inner life of unresponsive patients, their work raises questions both for those living with these conditions and for the people who love them. Can these individuals hear us, and even understand us? What do we owe them? Today’s reading list explores the human mind, and what it feels like to love somebody who cannot communicate the way they once did.

• The Texas county where “everybody has somebody in their family” with dementia: Risk factors for dementia usually come in clusters—and in Starr County, Texas, an almost entirely Hispanic community, they quickly stack up.
• How dementia locks people inside their pain: When a person feels pain but doesn’t understand it, they can end up silently suffering, Marion Renault wrote in 2021.