OF MICE & MEN - IDENTITY DISORDER
THE SPLIT-BRAIN PARADOX
One way in which this picture, based on the corporate hierarchy of a company, deviates from the actual structure of the brain can be seen in the curious case of split-brain patients. One unusual feature of the brain is that it has two nearly identical halves, or hemispheres, the left and right. Scientists have long wondered why the brain has this unnecessary redundancy, since the brain can operate even if one entire hemisphere is completely removed. No normal corporate hierarchy has this strange feature. Furthermore, if each hemisphere has consciousness, does this mean that we have two separate centers of consciousness inside our skull?
Dr. Roger W. Sperry of the California Institute of Technology won the Nobel Prize in 1981 for showing that the two hemispheres of the brain are not exact carbon copies of each other, but actually perform different duties. This result created a sensation in neurology (and also spawned a cottage industry of dubious self-help books that claim to apply the left-brain, right-brain dichotomy to your life).
Dr. Sperry was treating epileptics, who sometimes suffer from grand mal seizures often caused by feedback loops between the two hemispheres that go out of control. Like a microphone screeching in our ears because of a feedback loop, these seizures can become life-threatening. Dr. Sperry began by severing the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres of the brain, so that they o longer communicated and shared information between the left and right side of the body. This usually stopped the feedback loop and the seizures.
At first, these split-brain patients seemed perfectly normal. They were alert and could carry on a natural conversation as if nothing had happened. But a careful analysis of these individuals showed that something was very different about them.
Normally the hemispheres complement each other as thoughts move back and forth between the two. The left brain is more analytical and logical. It is where verbal skills are found, while the right brain is more holistic and artistic. But the left brain is the dominant one and makes the final decisions. Commands pass from the left brain to the right brain via the corpus callosum. But if that connection is cut, it means that the right brain is now free from the dictatorship of the left brain. Perhaps the right brain can have a will of its own, contradicting the wishes of the dominant left brain.
In short, there could be two wills acting within one skull, sometimes struggling for control of the body. This creates the bizarre situation where the left hand (controlled by the right brain) starts to behave independently of your wishes, as if it were an alien appendage.
There is one documented case in which a man was about to hug his wife with one hand, only to find that the other hand had an entirely different agenda. It delivered a right hook to her face. Another woman reported that she would pick out a dress with one hand, only to see her other hand grab an entirely different outfit. Meanwhile, one man had difficulty sleeping at night thinking that his other rebellious hand might struggle him.
At times, split-brain people think they are living in a cartoon, where one hand struggles to control the other. Physicians sometimes call this the Dr. Strangelove syndrome, because of a scene in the movie in which one hand has to fight against the other hand.
Dr. Sperry, after detailed studies of split-brain patients, finally concluded that there could be two distinct minds operating in a single brain. He wrote that each hemisphere is
"indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and ... both the left and right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel."
When I interviewed Dr. Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, an authority on split-brain patients, I asked him how experiment can be done to test this theory. There are a variety of ways to communicate separately to each hemisphere without the knowledge of the other hemisphere. One can, for example, have the subject wear special glasses on which questions can be shown to each eye separately, so that directing questions to each hemisphere is easy. The hard part is trying to get an answer from each hemisphere.
Since the right brain cannot speak (the speech centers are located only in the left brain), it is difficult to get answers from the right brain. Dr. Gazzaniga told me that to find out what the right brain was thinking, he created an experiment in which the (mute) right brain could "talk" by using Scrabble letters.
He began by asking the patient's left brain what he would do after graduation. The patient replied that he wanted to become a draftsman. But things got interesting when the (mute) right brain was asked the same question. The right brain spelled out the words: "automobile racer." Unknown to the dominant left brain, the right brain secretly had a completely different agenda for the future. The right brain literally had a mind of its own.
Rita Carter writes,
"The possible implications of this are mind-boggling. It suggests that we might all be carrying around in our skulls a mute prisoner with a personality, ambition, and self-awareness quite different from the day-to-day entity we believe ourselves to be."
Perhaps there is truth to the oft-heard statement that "inside him, there is someone yearning to be free." This means that the two hemispheres may even have different beliefs. For example, the neurologist V. S. Ramachandran describes one split-patient who,
when asked if he was a believer or not, said he was an atheist, but his right brain declared he was a believer. Apparently, it is possible to have two opposing religious beliefs residing in the same brain. Ramachandran continues: "If that person dies, what happens? Does one hemisphere go to heaven and the other go to hell? I don't know the answer to that."
(It is conceivable, therefore, that a person with a split-brain personality might be both Republican and Democrat at the same time. If you ask him whom he will vote for, he will give you the candidate of the left brain, since the right brain cannot speak. But you can imagine the chaos in the voting booth when he has to pull the lever with one hand.)
Excerpts from the book of
THE FUTURE OF THE MIND - The Scientific quest to understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind by
Michio Kaku.
https://mkaku.org/
https://www.verywellmind.com/phineas-gage-2795244
