10. Describe research on the split brain.
In the beginning many wondered if the right hemisphere had anything to do with our bodily function or was it really just there serving no purpose. Much research was then done to find that the left and right hemispheres of our brain serve different functions to help our body operate.
Some of the first research was done by Roger Sperry, Ronald Myers and Michael Gazzaniga; these three men took the brains of cats and monkeys and divided them leaving the animals with no life threatening effects on them. This led Philip Vogel and Joseph Bogen, two neurosurgeons, to perform operations on people who were victims of epileptic seizures. They had a hypothesis that the seizures were being caused by a large amount of abnormal activity in the cerebral hemispheres. After the surgery the patients, who now had what is known as split brains, were relatively normal. They had little to no change in there intellectual thoughts or personality. By learning from there experiences, knowledge of the two different hemispheres has been greatly enlarged.
From the research done on the spilt parts of the brain, studies have shown many things about complexity of the visual cortexes. The visual cortexes, we have learned, send information from your left side cortex to your right side hemisphere where it’s analyzed and from the right side cortex to the left side hemisphere. Although the data is return quickly and transmitted to the opposite hemisphere by going across the corpus callosum. With this knew found information Sperry and Gazzaniga devised a way they could send information to a humans right or left hemisphere.
They then conducted experiments in which they could send information to either the right or left hemisphere. As the person looked at the image the stimulus would flash to either the left or right. If they did this experiment to the people without a split brain the information would still be sent directly to the hemisphere that did not get the data in the first place. The patients who had the split brain surgery could then have each hemisphere tested separately because the lines of communication had been severed in surgery. Through other experimentations Gazzaniga concluded that each hemisphere would analyze data separately, and in the right moments could describe to you what that hemisphere could conclude on what it saw. Although, with some split brain patients they had troubles adjusting to having there brain not think as a whole. This idea of split brain leaves an impression, that those with this have two separate minds trying to act as one. With all this new knowledge scientist and researches have come to believe that the left hemisphere is what we call an interpreter.
Artifact#1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv4K5aStdU
This link shows us an experiment which was conducted to test the separate hemispheres and how they work.
Artifact#2
This image shows how the the sides of the body send information to the opposite side of the brain.
In the beginning many wondered if the right hemisphere had anything to do with our bodily function or was it really just there serving no purpose. Much research was then done to find that the left and right hemispheres of our brain serve different functions to help our body operate.
Some of the first research was done by Roger Sperry, Ronald Myers and Michael Gazzaniga; these three men took the brains of cats and monkeys and divided them leaving the animals with no life threatening effects on them. This led Philip Vogel and Joseph Bogen, two neurosurgeons, to perform operations on people who were victims of epileptic seizures. They had a hypothesis that the seizures were being caused by a large amount of abnormal activity in the cerebral hemispheres. After the surgery the patients, who now had what is known as split brains, were relatively normal. They had little to no change in there intellectual thoughts or personality. By learning from there experiences, knowledge of the two different hemispheres has been greatly enlarged.
From the research done on the spilt parts of the brain, studies have shown many things about complexity of the visual cortexes. The visual cortexes, we have learned, send information from your left side cortex to your right side hemisphere where it’s analyzed and from the right side cortex to the left side hemisphere. Although the data is return quickly and transmitted to the opposite hemisphere by going across the corpus callosum. With this knew found information Sperry and Gazzaniga devised a way they could send information to a humans right or left hemisphere.
They then conducted experiments in which they could send information to either the right or left hemisphere. As the person looked at the image the stimulus would flash to either the left or right. If they did this experiment to the people without a split brain the information would still be sent directly to the hemisphere that did not get the data in the first place. The patients who had the split brain surgery could then have each hemisphere tested separately because the lines of communication had been severed in surgery. Through other experimentations Gazzaniga concluded that each hemisphere would analyze data separately, and in the right moments could describe to you what that hemisphere could conclude on what it saw. Although, with some split brain patients they had troubles adjusting to having there brain not think as a whole. This idea of split brain leaves an impression, that those with this have two separate minds trying to act as one. With all this new knowledge scientist and researches have come to believe that the left hemisphere is what we call an interpreter.
Artifact#1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv4K5aStdU
This link shows us an experiment which was conducted to test the separate hemispheres and how they work.
Artifact#2
This image shows how the the sides of the body send information to the opposite side of the brain.