Split Brain essays

Split Brain essays Our brain weighs about three pounds and is divided into two similar looking, but different hemispheres, the right and the left. Both are connected to a large bundle of nerves, called corpus collosom. In some people with sever seizer disorders such as epilepsy, it was found that if this bundle of nerves were severed their seizers would stop or at least be under better control. From this surgical procedure, it was discovered that the two hemispheres had different methods of processing information, as well as controlling parts of the body. The left controls the right and the right controls the left. We rely on both hemispheres to process different information; we tend to naturally have one hemisphere that is more dominate than the other. While the brain is an organ that can be seen and held the mind is quite another matter. The mind remains unseen and physically immeasurable, yet appears to be part of us that controls everything. Roger Sperry pioneered this surgical procedure called commissurotomy. The commissurtomy surgically separates the hemispheres, making the transfer of information between them impossible. The patient is then left with two independently functioning hemispheres. Researchers found that when the brain was surgically separated, each hemisphere continued to have individual and private experiences, sensations, thoughts, and perceptions (wood and wood 64). Several experiments were done to test the perception in the split-brain patient for example; words flashed to the right field of vision of patients could be said and written with the right hand. In contrast, patients couldn't say or write words flashed to their left field of vision. Although standard experiments revealed that right hemisphere is nonverbal, it is far from incompetent. Even though the right hemisphere could not communicate to observers what stimuli it had been presented with, it did show some verbal comprehension. Although the patien ...