Flipping the switch on human consciousness?

These are my observations after reading a Washington Post article on this subject.

It is remarkable to me how many definitions or interpretations of the word, consciousness, exist. Personally, to avoid confusion, I prefer not to use that word in the context that we find in the referenced article.

An on-off switch in the brain for awareness? I don't think it is as simple as that. Imagine a desktop computer. It is largely useless without its peripheral devices. For the sake of this analogy, let us just consider the computer in association with a single input-output device, a touch-screen monitor. 

Try to turn on either the computer or the monitor without first plugging it into an electrical outlet, and nothing at all will happen in respect to the unpowered device. 

Power up the monitor without powering up the computer; and you won't see any information processed by the computer, and you won't be able to send any commands to the computer. 

Power up the computer without powering up the monitor; and again you won't see any information processed by the computer, and you won't be able to send any commands to the computer via the monitor (although in this case the computer is able to process data). 

Finally, even when you power up both the computer and the monitor, still the monitor won't report any data processed by the computer and you won't be able to send commands to the computer if the monitor is not connected to the computer. 

As to the anecdotal event reported in the article – a primitive experiment at best – it is interesting, but we should not be hasty in drawing general conclusions from it. We don't know whether the same procedure would have a similar impact on other persons. But, even if it were to have the same impact on others, there could be several explanations for that impact. To extend the earlier analogy, here are three possibilities:

(1) The electrical impulses at that point in the brain could be putting either the 'computer' or the 'monitor' or both into sleep mode.

(2) The electrical impulses at that point in the brain could be disconnecting the monitor from the computer (without putting either of them into sleep mode). 

(3) The electrical impulses at that point in the brain could be disconnecting the monitor from the computer and also putting one or both of them into sleep mode (directly or indirectly).