Roger Sperry and Split-brain Function.

The Split Brain Revisited

The Split Brain Revisited Contents

About 35 years ago in Scientific American, I wrote about dramatic new studies of the brain. Three patients who were seeking relief from epilepsy had undergone surgery that severed the corpus callosum--the superhighway of neurons connecting the halv es of the brain. By working with these patients, my colleagues Roger W. Sperry, Joseph E. Bogen, P.J. Vogel and I witnessed what happened when the l...

iUnHENT DflUXDONS IN i'SYCHOI.CXnCAl SC!t:\'Ct: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Human Laterality: Lessons From the Bisected Brain

With the discovery that surgical separation of the cerebral hemispheres produces two independent and differently abled cognitive spheres, Gazzaniga, Bogen, and Sperry (1962) launched a revolution in the field of psychology: the study of human laterality. More than thirty-five years later, the scientific progeny of Roger Sperry continue to study split-brain patients in order to solve some of the...

The role of language for conscious experience: observations from split-brain man.

Over the past 18 years I have been involved in studying a special group of patients having undergone brain bisection for the control of intractable epilepsy. These studies first started with Roger Sperry when he and I initiated the modern work on Dr. Bogen’s patients in the early 1960’s. Ever since, there have been many interpretations of the significance of our findings for a theory of mind of...

1 One Brain or Two ?

You are probably aware that the two halves of your brain are not the same and that they perform different functions. For one thing, the left side of your brain is responsible for movement in the right side of your body, and vice versa. Even beyond this, though, the two brain hemispheres appear to have even greater specialized abilities. It has come to be rather common knowledge that, for most o...