Happy Thought for 10 November 2023

Have a Happy Thought:

 

If you’ve ever caught yourself speaking to yourself, and thought maybe other people will think you’re weird…

Well, yes it’s weird that a brains talks to itself

But it’s a weird that I think all of us do

 

And I can say that we (humans) all (mostly) do this because of things called “split-brain” experiments.

These can only really be done in humans after some major trauma or surgery, where the connections between the two halves of a human brain are entirely (or largely) cut. In “normal” human brains, there is an information superhighway connecting the two sides, called the corpus collosum. Sometimes, often in treating epilepsy, this can be cut, leaving two halves of brains that still work well, they just work… independently.

 

And then we can do all sorts of things to play with the two sides of the brain, separately.

We all learned as kids that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, and vice versa, right?

And the left side of the brain controls language.

 

Ok, so start with a brain that doesn’t talk across the two sides. We can show the right eye one thing (a flower), and the left eye something different (a dog).

We then ask the person what they saw.

Their mouth uses language (controlled by the left side of the brain) to say, “a flower”.

But sometimes, their left hand (controlled by the right side of the brain, which also receives info from the left eye) will try to get the message across that that’s not what it saw, and will try to get its message out.

Even going so far as to move over and start writing or drawing on the back of the other hand!

Yes, this is the (separated) sides of the brain trying to communicate!

 

In fact, it was thanks to these “split-brain” experiments in the 1960’s that we get the ideas about “left-brained” people being better at language and mathematics, while “right-brained” people are better at spatial relationships and art.

 

So, the next time one of your hands is starting to tap out a code, maybe pay attention to that side of your body for a while!

 

 

Also, a bonus “quiz” for all of you quiz-masters and -mistresses out there…

Can you tell the difference between drug names and Tolkien characters? I wish you luck! (I got 16, see if you can do better!)

https://antidepressantsortolkien.vercel.app/

 

 

 

Thanks to Peter Godfrey-Smith’s book Metazoa: Animal Minds and the Birth of Consciousness for this and many other fascinations of the mind

I usually share primary sources, but Wikipedia’s done a great job of gathering them together, so here’s a starter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain

or, if you’re keen to jump straight into the scholarly article, here’s your starter:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/split-brain

  

 

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