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One Brain or Two?. Roger Sperry & Michael Gazzaniga. Rare and extreme cases of epilepsy, radical but effective treatment – cut the corpus callosum Of 10 operations, 4 subjects agreed to further testing. Three Types of Tests. Visual abilities test Picture shown to one visual field
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Roger Sperry & Michael Gazzaniga • Rare and extreme cases of epilepsy, radical but effective treatment – cut the corpus callosum • Of 10 operations, 4 subjects agreed to further testing
Three Types of Tests • Visual abilities test • Picture shown to one visual field • Tactile test • Feel but not see object • Auditory test • Told to reach in bag and find asked for object
Results • Visual test – • Right visual field, said object • Left visual, saw nothing • When asked to point to object in left field, did so with right hand • Conclusion: both “brains” see the object, only left hemisphere has language skills to say what they saw • Tactile test – • Object in right hand, could say • Object in left hand, couldn’t say what it was • They could point to the same object from group in front of them • Vicki
Criticisms • Jarre Levy • Disputes pop culture ideas of being right-brained or left-brained • Two hemispheres necessary to do practically everything Recent Applications • As above, attempts to clarify the misunderstandings and misapplications • Schiffer (1996) – hypothesized that MPD person has more-than-usual level of independence in one hemisphere, takes ‘control’ of consciousness, etc.