Divided brain

In the sixties Mike Gazzaniga was defending his doctoral thesis in the famous person Caltech, the Technological institute of California. A thesis that was going to cause sensation between neurologists and psychologists.

The topic of his work of doctorate was to study the psychological consequences of the surgery of cerebral split, a procedure in which the nervous connections are cut between two hemispheres of the brain. The reason to so tremendous surgical operation was an attempt for controlling the serious epilepsy. They had produced a group of patients in Darmouth and the surgeon asked Gazzaniga to study them. His discoveries were amazing.

When the brain splits communication stops existing between both hemispheres. Because the functions of the language are located normally in the left side, the person is only capable of speaking about things that this side knows. If a person with the divided brain there appear stimuli that only the right hemisphere sees, it is not capable of describing what it has seen. Nevertheless, if to the right hemisphere one gives him the opportunity to answer without having to speak – for example, admit it as the tact with the left hand - of that time yes is capable of identifying it.

But the most amazing case was that of a patient of ends of the 30s known by the initials P.S. He was a special patient because he could read words with both hemispheres, thing that the others were unable to do. Nevertheless, and like the rest of the patients, he could only speak across his left hemisphere. When emotional stimuli were appearing before him to the left hemisphere, P.S. could say what the stimulus was and how he was feeling, if it was something bad or good. When the same emotional stimulus was appearing to the right hemisphere, the speech of the lefthander was unable to say what was. Nevertheless, yes it could judge correctly if the stimulus seen by the right was bad or good. This way, before the word “mother“ P.S. it was qualifying it as well and the word “devil“ like villain. Apparently, the emotional stimuli continue a way that the split surgery does not cut.