Extreme childhood trauma, a young man whose consciousness is locked in a body unable to respond with his consciousness, and a man whose sight is restored after many years of blindness are extreme examples. But our tools - our own senses, and the external tools we have developed that exceed our own sensory capacity, are still too crude to detect anythng but extreme differences.

But we can extrapolate to the vast majority of human beings whose experiences and physical conditions fall within that still very broad range considered 'normal' (regardless of what we are looking at) on the bell curve.

All of this is the nuts and bolts stuff. At this point in time, we can begin to grapple with issues of function, of the mechanics of things. it does not tell us what consciousness is, what consciousness means, or what mindfulness is.