In particular, there are two fundamental questions that underlie my work. First, what does it mean to be conscious? How do we know that an individual is conscious, and how does this affect our understanding of brain function, after severe injury? The second question has to do with human thought. Do we need language to think? Does language make humans special? Is it because we posses language that our mind is capable of sophisticated thinking? While these questions occupy much of my thoughts, I take great pleasure in some distractions, and in particular playing the piano and flying small planes.