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Speaker 1: The powers of Hide seemed to have grown with the

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Speaker 1: sickliness of Jackyal, and certainly the hate that now divided

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Speaker 1: them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it was

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Speaker 1: a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the

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Speaker 1: full deformity of that creature that shared with him some

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Speaker 1: of the phenomena of consciousness, and was co heir with

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Speaker 1: him to death and beyond these links of community, which

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Speaker 1: in themselves made the most poignant part of his distress.

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Speaker 1: He thought of Hide for all his energy of life,

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Speaker 1: as of something not only hellish but inorganic. This was

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Speaker 1: the shocking thing that the slime of the pit seemed

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Speaker 1: to utter, cries and voices, that the amorphous dust gesticulated

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Speaker 1: and sinned, that what was dead and had no shape

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Speaker 1: should usurp the offices of life. Welcome to stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow your mind from How Stuff Works dot Com. Hey

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Speaker 1: you welcome to up to blow your mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. Why

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Speaker 1: are you reading Robert Louis Stevenson at us Oh, Because

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Speaker 1: that's from the Strange Case of Dr Jackel and Mr

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Speaker 1: Hyde from eighteen eighty six, and it concerns the idea

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Speaker 1: of there being two entities within the human skull, two

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Speaker 1: entities within the mind, indeed two minds within the brain.

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Speaker 1: And I think this is an interesting place to start

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Speaker 1: because while it presents a very erroneous vision of the

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Speaker 1: lateralization of human brain function, it also, uh, it gets

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Speaker 1: some of the same like hair standing up on the

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Speaker 1: back of the neck, that the actual research we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about today does, at least for me. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, Robert Louis Stevenson was a fabulous writer and

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Speaker 1: he's he's one of those authors that you can read

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Speaker 1: today and it holds up so well. Did they ever

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Speaker 1: make a good Jackal and Hyde movie. It's been a

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Speaker 1: very long time since I've saw it, but there was

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Speaker 1: an adaptation. It may have been a TV adaptation with

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Speaker 1: Michael Caine Michael Kine. Yeah, And I remember really loving

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Speaker 1: that and being quite disturbed by it as a child. Now,

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Speaker 1: I was thinking there had to be a Jekyl and

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Speaker 1: Hyde with Tim Curry as Jackal and Hyde. But I

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Speaker 1: think maybe I'm confusing that with the Muppet Treasure Island,

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Speaker 1: where he's You're thinking of the Muppet Jacky and High

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Speaker 1: he's long John silver Man, that scene where he tramples

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Speaker 1: Kermit to death is brutal. Well, yeah, so so we

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Speaker 1: are we are beginning with kind of an erroneous model.

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Speaker 1: But but I think helpful and because it is often

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Speaker 1: easy to think of the brain as the thing itself, right,

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Speaker 1: we fall into this center, our mode of of of

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Speaker 1: of you know, the thinking of the brain body relationship

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Speaker 1: as being a rider and its horse, when instead it

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Speaker 1: is more this idea of a centaur, this this this

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Speaker 1: one single entity, um, you know, and honestly, we see

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Speaker 1: this reflected in so many real and fictional scenarios. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Take for instance, the late physicist Stephen Hawking a brilliant

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Speaker 1: brain within a body that was gradually paralyzed by motor

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Speaker 1: neuron disease. Or just look to our dreams in which

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Speaker 1: the inner world of the brain runs wild while the

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Speaker 1: body goes un lockdown own. Uh you know, think of

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Speaker 1: our imaginings, our inner thoughts versus our outer smile. And

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Speaker 1: then there are all those disembodied brains and science fiction

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Speaker 1: right from Crying and his robot body and teenaging Ninja

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Speaker 1: Turtles to the Brain that Wouldn't Die Cane and RoboCop

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Speaker 1: to one of the best I know that's one of

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Speaker 1: one of your favorites as well, greatest of all time lovecrafts,

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Speaker 1: The Whisper and Darkness, and so many Doctor Who characters,

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Speaker 1: especially the Daleks brain guy from MST three Ky. We

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Speaker 1: just keep keep coming up with these these visions of

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Speaker 1: the brain as the just sort of the central human

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Speaker 1: thought experience. You know, I never thought of this until now,

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Speaker 1: but actually the brain guy from Mystery Science Theater is

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Speaker 1: kind of a great illustration of Daniel Dennett's short story

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Speaker 1: thought Experiment where am I I wonder if there was

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Speaker 1: any connection there. Someone have to have to have to

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Speaker 1: reach out to the the MST guys on that, you know,

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Speaker 1: there are those like plot lines where his brain gets

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Speaker 1: separated from him and somewhere else. Um. Of course, we

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Speaker 1: know that things are not this simple. No brain is

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Speaker 1: an island. It's affected by a host of outside influences,

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Speaker 1: including all sorts of environmental nervous stimuli. And we're learning

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Speaker 1: more and more about the role of our microbiome and

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Speaker 1: various parasites in human cognition. But even if we're to

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Speaker 1: just strip away all of that, if we're actually to

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Speaker 1: become a brain and a tank, you know, Kane's brain

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Speaker 1: in RoboCop two or or any of these sci fi

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Speaker 1: visions take out all that external stuff, just the brain.

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Speaker 1: We still have to contend with the fact that the brain,

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Speaker 1: like a government, is composed of different houses. The brain

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Speaker 1: consists of two cerebral hemispheres connected by the corpus colossum uh,

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Speaker 1: each each hemisphere with many different modules, all of these

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Speaker 1: acting in concert with each other, all of it interconnected. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: One comparison I've seen in some of the neuroscience research

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Speaker 1: we're looking at today is that the brain is often

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Speaker 1: described as a computer, you know, or by the metaphor

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Speaker 1: of a computer. You know. It's not that it is

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Speaker 1: a computer, but that Yeah, there's the analogy that the

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Speaker 1: brain is like a computer in the different parts of

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Speaker 1: the brain and are maybe sort of like different programs

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Speaker 1: that run on that computer. But at least one researcher

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Speaker 1: we were reading I said, maybe it's more accurate to

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Speaker 1: think of the brain not as a computer running different software,

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Speaker 1: but as a vast network of computers that are each

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Speaker 1: capable of operating independently, but most of the time operate

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Speaker 1: in in tandem. It's right. This is an example where

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Speaker 1: if you don't really have much of an understanding of

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Speaker 1: how computer works, the the the idea of thinking of

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Speaker 1: the human mind as a computer as technology is is

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Speaker 1: more harmful. But if you have, if you have a

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Speaker 1: better understanding of how computer actually works, it could perhaps

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Speaker 1: be a more helpful metaphor cuttle cats cuttle fish to

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Speaker 1: the second oil age and kingdom with or of darkness.

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Speaker 1: I don't dispute the eurostata, but if he's down here,

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Speaker 1: we know not blood but darkness, the earth's black riches.

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Speaker 1: No I could taste it on my lips. Today, I

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Speaker 1: want to talk to you about the science of transgenesis

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Speaker 1: tens genesis dot show now I wanted to to I

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Speaker 1: think it would be helpful to just go ahead and

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Speaker 1: consider one particular question right up top now. And we've

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Speaker 1: certainly received questions like this following episodes in which brain

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Speaker 1: hemispheres are discussed, such as our discussions on the bicameral

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Speaker 1: mind hypothesis or the alphabet in the Goddess. Because there's

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Speaker 1: this kind of pop understanding, right that each side of

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Speaker 1: our brain controlled certain aspects of being, and that certain

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Speaker 1: individuals have certain leanings that you know you have, right

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Speaker 1: brain people left brain people, and that when that we

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Speaker 1: can reconnect with our less favored hemisphere. Now, there certainly

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Speaker 1: are some pieces of evidence that we're gonna look at

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Speaker 1: in this episode that certain functions of human life are

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Speaker 1: strongly lateralized in one half of the brain or the other,

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Speaker 1: but they're not necessarily these functions or personality traits that

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Speaker 1: are understood in popular consciousness like logic and creativity, right

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Speaker 1: like taking or that you're gonna take some sort of

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Speaker 1: a quiz online and find out if you're a right

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Speaker 1: or lefty in terms of your brain. Now, a lot

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Speaker 1: of these ideas apparently were popularized by nineteen seventy nine

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Speaker 1: book title Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

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Speaker 1: by Betty Edwards. Uh, and the downstream myth that kind

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Speaker 1: of uh, you know, took over a popular culture for

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Speaker 1: a little bit. There is that, yeah, you had left

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Speaker 1: side logic, right side creativity. And even in people who

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Speaker 1: know better people, we still talk like this. I've noticed

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Speaker 1: that I use this metaphor even though I know it's wrong,

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Speaker 1: Like I will sometimes think of people as being very

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Speaker 1: right brained or very left brained, even though that I

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Speaker 1: know that that I've read before about how that's not correct. Well, likewise,

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Speaker 1: if I hear it mentioned saying a yoga class, I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna be less inclined. I'm not going to be the

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Speaker 1: jerk in the yoga class that like perks up and

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Speaker 1: says act l A, there's some interesting you know, I'm

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna set back and enjoy the class because because

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Speaker 1: it's one of those things that can can feel true. Right.

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Speaker 1: But the idea goes back further than this particular book here.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it goes back to some of the earlier

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Speaker 1: discoveries that we're going to discuss here about hemispheric division. UM.

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Speaker 1: You know, the ideas of neurologist Paul Broca who lived

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Speaker 1: eighteen four through eighty French neurologist or Carl Vernica who

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Speaker 1: lived who lived eighteen forty eight through nineteen o five,

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Speaker 1: a German. They studied patients who had communication troubles due

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Speaker 1: to brain injury UM, such as you know, left temporal

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Speaker 1: lobe injuries, and they figured that this was the language center.

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Speaker 1: Thus language was left hemisphere focus. And this is one

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Speaker 1: thing that actually has been more born out by good

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Speaker 1: research in in the history of neuroscience, is that one

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Speaker 1: thing it's very clear the left hemisphere of the brain does,

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Speaker 1: is it is dominant in language function. It's not that

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Speaker 1: the right brain can't do any language, but it can't

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Speaker 1: do a whole lot of language certainly can't do what

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Speaker 1: the left hemisphere can do. Right Uh now we we

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Speaker 1: kicked off the episode with reading from Robert Louis Stevenson

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Speaker 1: against Scottish author He lived eighteen fifty eight and according

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Speaker 1: to neuroscientist Elizabeth Waters, who's put together some you know,

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Speaker 1: wonderful ted talks and ted ed videos about this, uh this, this,

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Speaker 1: uh this topic, she points out that Robert Lewis Stevenson,

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Speaker 1: in his book Strange Case of Dr Checkl and Mr Hyde,

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Speaker 1: presented the notion of a logical left hemisphere that is

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Speaker 1: in combat in you know, in in in in this

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Speaker 1: uh this struggle with an emotional right hemisphere, and uh

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Speaker 1: it's It's also worth noting that Robert Lewis Stevenson was

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Speaker 1: also inspired by two popular French cases of individuals who

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Speaker 1: exhibited dual personalities, uh their name. They were credited as

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Speaker 1: being uh Felida X and Sergeant Fay. And these were

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Speaker 1: apparently cases that were really you know, well covered in

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Speaker 1: French and British press at the time. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: kind of popular science influencing, uh, popular science fiction. Do

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Speaker 1: you have any sense of whether what was presented to

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Speaker 1: the public about these cases was largely accurate or was compleating.

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Speaker 1: I don't, but I'd love to go back and look

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Speaker 1: at it, because you know, this is a case where

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Speaker 1: you can the science influences the science fiction, and the

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Speaker 1: science fiction influences, uh to a certain extent, how the

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Speaker 1: public thinks about a given topic. Now, other another influence

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Speaker 1: on Robert Louis Stevenson. Apparently he had a just a

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Speaker 1: terribly high fever, uh at one point during which he

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Speaker 1: claimed to have experienced a split into which he experienced

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Speaker 1: quote myself and quote that other fellow. Yeah, so this

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Speaker 1: apparently had a big influence on him. An according to

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Speaker 1: biograph for Claire Harmon, author of Myself and the Other Fellow,

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Speaker 1: duality and the idea of the double self turn up

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Speaker 1: again and again in Robert Louis Stevenson's work. Well, maybe

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Speaker 1: I'm over interpreting here, and this could be just kind

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Speaker 1: of a mundane parallel, but I mean I see stuff

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Speaker 1: like that even in Treasury, and you know, his Space

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Speaker 1: Adventure where long John Silver is at the same time

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Speaker 1: a a patient and sort of good father figure and

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Speaker 1: also an evil pirate. Yeah. Yeah, this is the the

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Speaker 1: argument here is, Yeah, that this is the type of

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Speaker 1: duality that that he was obsessed with and and so

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Speaker 1: much of it, so many of his works, I mean

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Speaker 1: essentially had a fever induced psychedelic experience and then this

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Speaker 1: lining up with various elements of his of his life.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that is the meat he chewed upon. But

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Speaker 1: of course, this popular understanding of the left right division.

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Speaker 1: You know that that like the side ruled by passion

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Speaker 1: and the right brain and the side ruled by logic

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Speaker 1: and reason and the left brain. That's not exactly right, right.

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Speaker 1: You know, as we'll explore, doctors actually looked to patients

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Speaker 1: with missing brain hemispheres or separated hemispheres and is appealing

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Speaker 1: as this notion, maybe it didn't really hold up. I mean,

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Speaker 1: they were all still logical and creative beings. You didn't

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Speaker 1: just end up with us, you know, as a Spock

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Speaker 1: or whatever the opposite of Spock would be in the

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Speaker 1: Star Trek universe. To be clear, though, Yeah, the brain

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Speaker 1: is divided into two hemispheres in internal regions like the striatum,

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Speaker 1: the hypothalamus, the thalamus, and the brain stem. They're also

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Speaker 1: organized with left and right sides as well, despite appearing

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Speaker 1: to be continuous when you when you sort of look

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Speaker 1: at illustrations of them. Yeah, and for the rest of

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Speaker 1: this episode, in fact, this is gonna be the first

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Speaker 1: of two episodes we're going to be looking at ways

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Speaker 1: that despite this, uh, this like emotional versus logical split

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Speaker 1: being wrong, there are very interesting ways that the brain

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Speaker 1: hemispheres are different and do different things. In fact, well,

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Speaker 1: we can start with the mundane ones I guess, right,

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Speaker 1: like mundane motor control differences. Exactly. We can look to

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Speaker 1: the two two arms and legs. For instance, the right

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Speaker 1: hemisphere of the brain controls the left arm and leg,

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Speaker 1: the left hemisphere controls the right arm and leg. Now

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Speaker 1: I have read that in a way like both hemispheres

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Speaker 1: can in some way to some degree control both arms.

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Speaker 1: But that when it gets done to like fine motor

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Speaker 1: control of like controlling the actions of the hand and

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Speaker 1: especially that's where he gets really lateralized and like it's

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Speaker 1: really going to be your right brain that's controlling what

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Speaker 1: your left hand does with its fingers. Now, a more

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Speaker 1: complex example is, but one it's extremely important is each

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Speaker 1: eye has a left and right visual field, with the

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Speaker 1: left visual field sent to the right hemisphere and the

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Speaker 1: right field sent to the left hemisphere. Now this can

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Speaker 1: also be misunderstood because I've seen it represented in the

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Speaker 1: press in places that where like the left eye goes

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Speaker 1: to the right hemisphere and the right eye goes to

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Speaker 1: the left hemisphere. And that's not quite right either, because

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Speaker 1: both hemispheres can get some information from both eyes. But

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Speaker 1: it has to do with the side of the visual

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Speaker 1: field that you're talking about. So like stuff that you

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Speaker 1: perceive over to the left part of what you're looking

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Speaker 1: at that goes to the right hemisphere, and stuff you

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Speaker 1: perceive over in the right area of what you're looking

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Speaker 1: at to the right of your center of vision that

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Speaker 1: goes to the left hemisphere. And then our visual experience

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Speaker 1: of reality it comes together from these two feeds. Movement

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Speaker 1: and vision depend then on this uni hemispheric relationship. Now,

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Speaker 1: why do our brains work this way? Yeah? Why the crossover?

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Speaker 1: Why don't we just go straight up parallel? It's one

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Speaker 1: of those things about the human vice seems needlessly complicated, right, um,

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Speaker 1: And the thing is we're not entirely sure. One theory

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Speaker 1: that has been discussed is that animals developed more as

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Speaker 1: as animals developed more advanced nervous systems, there was an

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Speaker 1: advantage in escaping to the right if something came at

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Speaker 1: you from the left. So these are examples where we

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Speaker 1: can actually look to specific hemispheres and say here, here,

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Speaker 1: here's where they are most active. But we can't easily

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Speaker 1: extend this idea to other aspects of cognition, and certainly

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Speaker 1: not to the overall human experience or things like pure

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Speaker 1: logical thinking or creativity. No, not that, But there are

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Speaker 1: some cognitive functions that do appear to be pretty strongly

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Speaker 1: lateralized in one way or another, And one of them,

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Speaker 1: obviously is language. We mentioned this, Yeah, that's localized to

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Speaker 1: the left, especially complex language and the power of speech.

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Speaker 1: There's some research indicating that like the right brain might

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Speaker 1: be able to have a sort of simple lexicon or

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Speaker 1: understand very simple bits of language, but if you want

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Speaker 1: to generate a sentence like speak one out loud, or

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Speaker 1: understand complex instructions in language, this is usually going to

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Speaker 1: be dominated by processes in the left hemisphere. Oh and

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Speaker 1: we should also say that everything we say about hemispheres

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Speaker 1: in this episode is going to be for most cases.

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Speaker 1: There there cases where this is reversed, where people have

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Speaker 1: like the switching of which hemisphere is dominant, but we're

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Speaker 1: talking about the majority of cases here right now. Meanwhile, attention,

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Speaker 1: we see that more localized to the right hemisphere. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and this would be especially things like visual and spatial reasoning,

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Speaker 1: Like the right hemisphere is going to be very important

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Speaker 1: if you need to imagine a map in order to

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Speaker 1: give directions. So, brain activity unbalancing, where one one side

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Speaker 1: is more active in a given task than another. This

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Speaker 1: this occurs based on which system is being employed in

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Speaker 1: a given task, rather than anything about an individual or

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Speaker 1: their background. Of This is all, of course, assuming a

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Speaker 1: healthy brain. Obviously, if one side of your brain is missing,

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Speaker 1: there's going to be more activity beside it's there. Now,

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Speaker 1: no evidence suggests that individual individuals have truly dominant sides

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Speaker 1: of the brain when it comes to their you know,

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Speaker 1: their personality makeup right, you're not like creative right brained

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Speaker 1: or logical left brain right and likewise that the logic

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Speaker 1: and creativity split idea. Uh, you know again, you'll have

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Speaker 1: individuals that are certainly more logical, perhaps or more creative.

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Speaker 1: But as as neuroscientist Elizabeth Waters has pointed out among

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Speaker 1: many others, logic and creativity are not these two distinct notions,

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Speaker 1: you know, they're deeply interlinks, Like being good at logic

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Speaker 1: is in many cases being a certain type of creative. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean, what you might dismiss is just a really

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Speaker 1: logical exercise, like safe solving a complex math problem that

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Speaker 1: may well require that will require some creative thinking. Likewise,

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Speaker 1: a creative endeavor like say, writing a poem, finishing a novel,

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Speaker 1: coming up with a cool joke, whatever, you know, those

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Speaker 1: are gonna gonna be activities that also involve logic. In fact,

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Speaker 1: some of what we're going to discuss in this pair

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Speaker 1: of episodes in in the neuroscience research turns this whole

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Speaker 1: thing on its head in a way, because the left

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Speaker 1: part of the brain that's more dominant in exercises involving

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Speaker 1: speech and language often tends to be the more creative

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Speaker 1: one in explaining behaviors. Right it's the one that tends

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Speaker 1: to interpret and come up with explanations for things as

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Speaker 1: will as we'll talk about later on, which is a

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Speaker 1: creative exercise. Whereas the right brain tends to more often

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Speaker 1: be the part of the brain that records experiences accurately

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Speaker 1: without creating explanations for them exactly. And but but certainly,

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Speaker 1: if I'm gonna you know, drive home anything, we want

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Speaker 1: to point out that that the creativity law, anything that

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Speaker 1: employs these these two loose idea, you know, buckets of

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Speaker 1: of of of cognition. You know, these are going to

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Speaker 1: be products of whole brain cognition. Like our our the

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Speaker 1: brain is all these areas of the brain are working together,

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Speaker 1: uh to create this effect. Now, ultimately in this episode,

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Speaker 1: we're going to be asking what happens when you cut

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Speaker 1: those two hemispheres of the brain apart. Yes, but I

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Speaker 1: guess we'll have to get to that after a break.

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Speaker 1: All Right, we're back now. Before we get to the

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Speaker 1: idea of severing the brain hemispheres, we should probably talk

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Speaker 1: about a little more about Broca and Vernica. Yeah, these

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Speaker 1: are just two really key individuals to this whole discussion

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Speaker 1: and even just the idea of understanding the human brain.

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Speaker 1: Um So Paul Broca will start with him again eighteen

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Speaker 1: eighty He was a French surgeon, neurologist and anthropologists and

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Speaker 1: he is also for anyone who hasn't read the book

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Speaker 1: but has seen the title. He is the namesake for

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Speaker 1: Karl Sagan's book Broke His Brain. Sagan describes at one

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Speaker 1: point point holding a jar containing the noted scientist's brain. Wait,

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Speaker 1: like imagining doing this literally doing literally doing it? Okay,

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Speaker 1: holding holding the jar that contains his brain and thinking

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Speaker 1: about like what you know, talking he talks a bit

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Speaker 1: about Broca and and and you know, his his work,

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Speaker 1: his personality, but also just sort of meditates on what

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Speaker 1: you're doing when you when you hold this brain in

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Speaker 1: your hands. I want to imagine that, having not read

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Speaker 1: this book, it is in fact just like a caper

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Speaker 1: story with Broker's brain as the MacGuffin and it gets

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Speaker 1: traded around and their car chases. Sagan is trying to

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Speaker 1: get it back from the KGB spies. Uh no, not quite,

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Speaker 1: but Dante Skull shows up as well. O nice So

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Speaker 1: brokea though he made important contributions to our understanding of cancer,

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Speaker 1: the treatment of aneurysms and aphasia and his Sagan pointed out,

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Speaker 1: Broca was also quite concerned with the medical care of

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Speaker 1: the poor. He was you know, he was he was

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Speaker 1: a free thinker. He was a strong Darwin supporter, and

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Speaker 1: above just about everything, he was the founder of modern

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Speaker 1: brain surgery, and Broco was influential in identifying regions of

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Speaker 1: the brain as being especially responsible for certain cognitive functions. Right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he investigated the rheinan cephalon the smell brain. But his

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Speaker 1: name actually goes to a small region in the left

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Speaker 1: frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex what we call Broca's area. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is left hemisphere, third frontal convolution. To be specific,

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Speaker 1: this is the area where articulate speech is largely localized

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Speaker 1: and controlled. And his Segan pointed out, given the importance

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Speaker 1: of language and articulate speech and human evolution, this portion

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Speaker 1: of the human brain may be considered, in Sagan's words,

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Speaker 1: the seat of our humanity and some respects. And it's

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Speaker 1: also something anatomists have looked for in the remains of

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Speaker 1: our hominid ancestors, such as Homo habilish. Columbia University anthropologist

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Speaker 1: Ralph Holloway Sagan sided Uh's you know, studied and claimed

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Speaker 1: to have found evidence for its development of a Broca's

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Speaker 1: area some two million years ago, and this would have

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Speaker 1: been around the time early tool use was beginning uh.

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Speaker 1: Also South African palaeo anthropologist Philip Tobias also made this claim,

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Speaker 1: though according to Susanne Kemer, Associate professor of Linguistics at

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Speaker 1: Rice University, quote, these claims have been controversial. Many see

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Speaker 1: no regular impressions that could be ascribed to brain structure here,

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Speaker 1: and I can imagine it's probably difficult to just look

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Speaker 1: at skulls and figure out what brain regions were evolved when, right,

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Speaker 1: but broke as a discovery here broke a's namesake here

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Speaker 1: is the first of many discoveries that illuminated hemispheric separation

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Speaker 1: of function in the brain. And you know, and really

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Speaker 1: driving home the idea of that specific brain functions might

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Speaker 1: be isolated to specific parts of the brain. Yeah, if

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Speaker 1: there's a certain part in the left hemisphere that seems

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Speaker 1: especially important for language, what else could be lateralized? Right

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Speaker 1: now is to throw in the Nowadays, you hear more

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Speaker 1: talk of networks as opposed to regions. You know, again

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Speaker 1: getting into this idea that that that that we're looking

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Speaker 1: at at a network of of of different systems and

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Speaker 1: not individual areas that are just doing all the heavy lifting.

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Speaker 1: Your brain is less like a computer. Maybe in more

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Speaker 1: like the Internet, right, but a conscious Internet. That's scary.

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Speaker 1: Uh so horror movie pitch the conscious Internet. Uh yeah,

403
00:22:29,320 --> 00:22:32,320
Speaker 1: and then it takes physical form via three D printers. Right,

404
00:22:33,119 --> 00:22:36,000
Speaker 1: But let's also talk about about the German Carl Vernica

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Speaker 1: okay live eight five a German? Yeah, Well, thus the

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Speaker 1: Vernica uh he was. He has another area of the

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Speaker 1: brain's name for him, the Vernica area, and he first

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Speaker 1: described this area in eighteen seventy four, and it's found

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Speaker 1: in the posterior third of the upper temporal convolution of

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Speaker 1: the left hemisphere of the brain. It's close to the

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Speaker 1: auditory cortex and seems to play a unique role in

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Speaker 1: the comprehension of sound and language reception and comprehension. So

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Speaker 1: the stage is set to discuss the lateralization of certain

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Speaker 1: brain functions. But we mentioned earlier that this episode was

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Speaker 1: really gonna end up focusing on cutting brains in half.

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Speaker 1: And I know you're out there saying, when are you

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Speaker 1: going to cut the brain in half? Robert, I think

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Speaker 1: it's time. We've got to make the incision, that's right,

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Speaker 1: And what better time to just slice the human brain

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Speaker 1: in half than the nineteen sixties and seventies it's really

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Speaker 1: really perfect. I mean, you could really almost it's tempting

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Speaker 1: to just want to think like a left brain, right brain,

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Speaker 1: old fashioned idea and have like the nineteen sixties hemisphere,

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies hemisphere. Right, there's just something something

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Speaker 1: perfect about the post revolutionary hemisphere. Uh no, no, So

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about the research of neuroscientists named

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Speaker 1: Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga, and so actually the brain

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Speaker 1: cutting started in the nineteen forties, but it was in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties that the research on people with severed

430
00:23:57,280 --> 00:24:00,680
Speaker 1: hemispheres really got going, that's right. And they they discovered

431
00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:04,080
Speaker 1: something that's that was seemingly amazing that if you split

432
00:24:04,119 --> 00:24:07,720
Speaker 1: the brain, you you essentially split the person as well

433
00:24:08,280 --> 00:24:10,720
Speaker 1: in a certain sense and not in another sense. And

434
00:24:10,760 --> 00:24:12,560
Speaker 1: well we'll have to define that as we go on.

435
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:14,720
Speaker 1: But but but just think about it for a second.

436
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:17,320
Speaker 1: Just the the the promise that the you know, the

437
00:24:17,359 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 1: tease of this idea that there would be one person

438
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:23,720
Speaker 1: per hemisphere of the brain, this division of the self.

439
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:26,960
Speaker 1: Getting back to this idea in a certain sense of

440
00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:31,359
Speaker 1: myself and the other guy, right, yeah, oh, that's right. Uh,

441
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:34,520
Speaker 1: the Robert Louis Stevenson and h and this was work

442
00:24:34,560 --> 00:24:38,320
Speaker 1: they would have eventually earned Sperry the Nobel Prize in

443
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:43,480
Speaker 1: Medicine in now. During this this these decades of research,

444
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:47,960
Speaker 1: Sperry performed experiments on cats, monkeys, and humans and focus

445
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:50,760
Speaker 1: a lot of attention on the neuron packed corpus colossum

446
00:24:50,840 --> 00:24:53,720
Speaker 1: that bridges the hemispheres. This is often described as sort

447
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:58,080
Speaker 1: of like a broadband Internet cable, like an Internet backbone,

448
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:01,240
Speaker 1: fiber optic or something that connects the two hemispheres together

449
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:04,600
Speaker 1: and enables most of the exchange of information between them.

450
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:08,880
Speaker 1: Right now, with non human animals, he surgically split the brains,

451
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:11,920
Speaker 1: producing what he called a split brain, in which each

452
00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 1: side seemed to function independently of the other. And he

453
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:18,240
Speaker 1: also found that an animal with a split brain could

454
00:25:18,359 --> 00:25:21,400
Speaker 1: memorize double the information. Oh I didn't read that. Yeah,

455
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:25,080
Speaker 1: that was a tidbit I ran across creepy now obviously

456
00:25:25,160 --> 00:25:27,359
Speaker 1: him not being a mad scientist villain in like a

457
00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:30,879
Speaker 1: serial in a comic book or something. He didn't split

458
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:33,879
Speaker 1: human brains just for experiment, that's right. Fortunately for him,

459
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:37,560
Speaker 1: there were already humans walking around with split brains because

460
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:40,359
Speaker 1: they had had because there were patients who had their

461
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:45,440
Speaker 1: corpus colossum separated uh severed as a treatment for epilepsy,

462
00:25:45,840 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 1: and so he was able to get a number of

463
00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:50,360
Speaker 1: these individuals to volunteer for his experiments. Yes, so this

464
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:54,320
Speaker 1: procedure was not done for experiments, obviously, it was done

465
00:25:54,320 --> 00:25:58,120
Speaker 1: as a medical treatment, and it's known as a corpus callosodomy,

466
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:01,119
Speaker 1: and so the theory behind it is that an epileptic

467
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:03,960
Speaker 1: seizure is sort of like a storm of activity in

468
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:07,360
Speaker 1: the brain with too many neurons firing and triggering chaotic

469
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:11,440
Speaker 1: activity all throughout both hemispheres. And the idea was if

470
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:14,840
Speaker 1: you cut the corpus colosum, if you sever that broadband

471
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 1: internet connection between the two hemispheres of the brain, you

472
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:21,480
Speaker 1: limit the ability of one of these seizures to spread

473
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:23,919
Speaker 1: from one hemisphere of the brain to the other. And

474
00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:27,040
Speaker 1: in many cases where severe epilepsy could not be treated

475
00:26:27,040 --> 00:26:30,280
Speaker 1: by any other means, the surgery actually was considered effective,

476
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 1: I think, especially later versions of the surgery, less so

477
00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:35,600
Speaker 1: in the forties, more so I think in like the

478
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: sixties on. But this surgery generally isn't used today because

479
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:43,679
Speaker 1: we have on on the whole safer, better, less radical

480
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:46,960
Speaker 1: treatments for epilepsy. Now they're they're drugs that are pretty effective,

481
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:50,640
Speaker 1: and there are less radical surgeries you can do. And

482
00:26:50,720 --> 00:26:53,879
Speaker 1: it's not known exactly how many patients ever received a

483
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:58,120
Speaker 1: corpus colisotomy and history I've seen estimates including somewhere between

484
00:26:58,280 --> 00:27:02,359
Speaker 1: fifty and a hundred total patient. I read Michael Gazaniga

485
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 1: estimated that there were over a hundred patients who had

486
00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:08,640
Speaker 1: received one. Now, obviously not all of these patients volunteered

487
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:12,760
Speaker 1: for split brain neurology research, but some did. And one

488
00:27:12,760 --> 00:27:15,400
Speaker 1: of the really interesting things to point out is that

489
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:17,800
Speaker 1: we'll have to keep coming back to this is that

490
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:21,840
Speaker 1: despite the radical nature of this surgical intervention, cutting the

491
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 1: two hemispheres apart and basically preventing them from communicating with

492
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:29,800
Speaker 1: one another, most patients reported that their lives were generally

493
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:33,919
Speaker 1: normal after the surgeries. Their families did not usually report

494
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:38,239
Speaker 1: any major changes in behavior, personality, or cognitive ability. Uh.

495
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:41,600
Speaker 1: Michael Gazaniga says that generally, quote, you wouldn't know it

496
00:27:41,640 --> 00:27:44,400
Speaker 1: if you were talking to such a patient. Yeah, I've

497
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 1: read that the really the only notable results of this

498
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 1: outside of you know, perhaps some experimental stuff that's gonna

499
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:53,880
Speaker 1: come up, was that they didn't have the seizures anymore. Yeah,

500
00:27:53,920 --> 00:27:56,520
Speaker 1: like that. That was the goal, and that was the

501
00:27:56,520 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 1: the the primary experiential difference. By and large, people underwent

502
00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:04,760
Speaker 1: this procedure. It cut the two halves of their brain apart,

503
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:08,120
Speaker 1: and they seemed mostly unchanged. Now. On the other hand,

504
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:12,439
Speaker 1: I have read some anecdotes about changes certain patients faced,

505
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:16,960
Speaker 1: especially right after the surgery, during like an adaptation period.

506
00:28:17,280 --> 00:28:20,640
Speaker 1: For example, a article in Nature News by David Woolman

507
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:24,280
Speaker 1: recounts the experiences of a patient named Vicky, who received

508
00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:27,719
Speaker 1: a calisotomy in nineteen seventy nine to treat terrible caesar

509
00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:30,000
Speaker 1: she was having. There's a story that her seizures were

510
00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 1: so bad that one time she like fell on a

511
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:34,640
Speaker 1: stove and burned her back while she was having one.

512
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 1: Um And so she says that for the first few

513
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 1: months after her surgery, she would stand in the grocery

514
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: store trying to pick items off of the shelf, but

515
00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 1: having severe difficulty just picking up items. She says, quote,

516
00:28:49,240 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 1: I'd reach with my right right hand for the thing

517
00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 1: I wanted, but the left would come in and they'd

518
00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:58,640
Speaker 1: kind of fight almost like repelling magnets. Uh. And she

519
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 1: would apparently have similar troubles when trying to get dressed

520
00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 1: in the morning. Woolman writes, quote, Vicky couldn't reconcile what

521
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:07,960
Speaker 1: she wanted to put on with what her hands were doing.

522
00:29:08,360 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: Sometimes she ended up wearing three outfits at once. And

523
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 1: then Vicky says, quote, I'd have to dump all the

524
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:17,000
Speaker 1: clothes on the bed to catch my breath and start again.

525
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:19,520
Speaker 1: And I've read other accounts along these lines that a

526
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: few split brain patients described things like that this was

527
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:25,840
Speaker 1: one image one hand buttoning up a shirt and the

528
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:29,320
Speaker 1: other hand following immediately behind it and unbutton ing all

529
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 1: the buttons. But these kinds of these type of descriptions

530
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:37,520
Speaker 1: are apparently not typical. Most reports indicate that people's behavior,

531
00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:41,760
Speaker 1: cognitive ability, personality, all that is mostly unchanged. And even

532
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:44,280
Speaker 1: in Vicky's case, after about a year, she was mostly

533
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: back to normal in terms of everyday activities. She says,

534
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 1: she could, you know, slice vegetables, to cook and and

535
00:29:50,520 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 1: operate machines and all that. And this is in line

536
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:57,400
Speaker 1: with other reports. Amazingly, you can completely sever the connection

537
00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 1: between the two hemispheres of the brain and most of

538
00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 1: the people you do this to function normally in day

539
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 1: to day life afterwards, before we even get to the

540
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:10,160
Speaker 1: other strange stuff we're talking about that in itself seems crazy. Yeah,

541
00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 1: I am just always amazed when you when you hear

542
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 1: about the things that can be done to the brain

543
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:19,800
Speaker 1: and the ways that the brain can can can bounce

544
00:30:19,800 --> 00:30:23,880
Speaker 1: back and and behave just relatively normally or just or

545
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:27,000
Speaker 1: seemingly completely normally. Even in the face of catastrophic injuries.

546
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:30,719
Speaker 1: The brain can often find a way. The mind, uh

547
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 1: finds a way. But of course, despite these reports that

548
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 1: people are generally unchanged, what we're about to talk about

549
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,160
Speaker 1: is that if you and what Sparry and Kazaniga discovered

550
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:42,760
Speaker 1: is if you apply some special conditions in the lab,

551
00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:46,680
Speaker 1: you can see some really strange and thrilling things at

552
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:49,760
Speaker 1: work in the split brain patients. Yeah, the crux of

553
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:52,920
Speaker 1: this comes down to the very visual processing we discussed earlier.

554
00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:56,840
Speaker 1: Left visual field, right side of the brain, right visual field,

555
00:30:57,080 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 1: left side of the brain. So in a split brain,

556
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 1: the left side of the brain can't see the left

557
00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:05,400
Speaker 1: field of vision and the right side of the brain

558
00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 1: can't see the right visual field, or generally can't generally yeah,

559
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:11,080
Speaker 1: generally speaking, and we'll we'll get into the meat of

560
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:13,200
Speaker 1: this in a minute. But but it's going to lead

561
00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 1: to split brain cats with eye patches and split brain

562
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:19,880
Speaker 1: monkeys with memorization, because, as we mentioned again, he did

563
00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:24,200
Speaker 1: conduct animal experiments to see how this uh to to

564
00:31:24,200 --> 00:31:27,120
Speaker 1: to reveal what was going on, and the animal experiments

565
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:30,880
Speaker 1: were very they produced very strange and fascinating results. But

566
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 1: you always wonder, well, okay, you know, animal brains are

567
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 1: just different than human brains, so so what happens with

568
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 1: the actual human So I was reading an account of

569
00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:42,280
Speaker 1: their very first patients, very in Gazaniga's very first split

570
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:45,640
Speaker 1: brain patient, uh in that that David Wollman article, and

571
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 1: it was a man known as w J. A lot

572
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:50,160
Speaker 1: of times these patients are known just by a first

573
00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:53,560
Speaker 1: name or by initials, you know, to protect their their identity.

574
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:57,360
Speaker 1: And apparently w J. Had served as a paratrooper in

575
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:00,200
Speaker 1: World War two and he suffered a head engine read

576
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:02,840
Speaker 1: during the fighting, a Nazi had smashed him in the

577
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:06,600
Speaker 1: head with the rifle butt, and afterwards he experienced severe

578
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 1: seizures and was treated with the callistotomy. And so in

579
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two after the surgery, Becazanega ran visual field

580
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:18,880
Speaker 1: experiments with w J. And what he found was amazing.

581
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 1: So the standard set up of one of these experiments

582
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:24,240
Speaker 1: is that you have the patient focus on a dot

583
00:32:24,480 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 1: in the middle of a screen and then you flash

584
00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: a visual stimulus in the peripheral visual field on one

585
00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 1: side or the other. And the scientists knew from previous

586
00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:36,880
Speaker 1: research that this would mean stimuli shown to the left

587
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:39,640
Speaker 1: visual field, as we've been saying, would usually be perceived

588
00:32:39,680 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: only by the right hemisphere, and stuff shown in the

589
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 1: right visual field would be perceived only by the left hemisphere.

590
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 1: But now that the hemispheres can't talk to each other anymore,

591
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: what happens? So w J was shown images in his

592
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: left or right visual fields and then asked to press

593
00:32:56,680 --> 00:32:59,320
Speaker 1: a button and then asked to say what he saw.

594
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:02,600
Speaker 1: And when an image was shown to his left hemisphere,

595
00:33:02,720 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: the part we know is primarily responsible for language, he

596
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:07,040
Speaker 1: had no problems at all. Right, you show the left

597
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 1: brain whatever you want, a cat or you know, show

598
00:33:09,760 --> 00:33:12,880
Speaker 1: him RoboCop, and then they'll press the button to indicate

599
00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 1: they saw something, and he'll say, I saw robo cop.

600
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:18,560
Speaker 1: But when they showed an image to w j's right hemisphere.

601
00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 1: What he said was that he saw nothing, but strangely enough,

602
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 1: his left hand, which remember, of course, the left hand

603
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 1: is connected to the right hemisphere. His left hand pressed

604
00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 1: the button when he saw the image, even though the

605
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 1: part of his brain responsible for speech was saying out loud,

606
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:39,360
Speaker 1: I don't see anything. I mean, take take a second

607
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:41,920
Speaker 1: to think about that. Like when I first read that,

608
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:46,200
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, okay, oh, and then it hit

609
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: me and I got the chills. I mean, you know,

610
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:50,960
Speaker 1: the hair stands up on the back of my neck. Literally. Yeah,

611
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 1: Because what we're we're imagining here is we we read

612
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:56,480
Speaker 1: this and discussed it is. It's not a complete sle

613
00:33:57,080 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 1: like separation of self, but it's like a temporary, very duality,

614
00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:05,479
Speaker 1: like a flash of duality, where in the very place

615
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:09,560
Speaker 1: where we we want and expect to find some sort

616
00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:13,240
Speaker 1: of continuity of self, well, it's yeah, it's like peeking

617
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:17,360
Speaker 1: in and seeing a quick glimpse of a reality that

618
00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 1: may be far more true and accurate a description of

619
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:23,400
Speaker 1: how the brain is than we would like to admit,

620
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:26,319
Speaker 1: or that normally seems true to us. Because again, we

621
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:29,719
Speaker 1: always feel unified and the split brain patients feel unified

622
00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:32,560
Speaker 1: will revisit this a little more, but they don't report

623
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:35,560
Speaker 1: feeling like two different people. They just feel normal. This

624
00:34:35,640 --> 00:34:38,399
Speaker 1: is just how I am. And yet from an objective

625
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 1: outsider's point of view, it's almost as if you've got

626
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:44,360
Speaker 1: two different people taking the test at the same time.

627
00:34:44,719 --> 00:34:48,040
Speaker 1: One is registering I see something with a hand and

628
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:50,799
Speaker 1: the other is saying he doesn't see anything. And yet

629
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:54,280
Speaker 1: it only seems this way under certain conditions, and only

630
00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:56,440
Speaker 1: from the outside. Now, if you want to see an

631
00:34:56,440 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: example of this, you can actually see one of these

632
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:01,560
Speaker 1: experiments demonstrated on film. And there's like a short documentary

633
00:35:01,600 --> 00:35:04,400
Speaker 1: segment feature that I think he's up on YouTube. Still

634
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:07,400
Speaker 1: there's a patient name to Joe who is working with

635
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:10,839
Speaker 1: Kazanega and this looks like it's the nineties or so,

636
00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:15,040
Speaker 1: and uh, it demonstrates a typical experiment. So you show

637
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:18,480
Speaker 1: either words or pictures to the left brain only, and

638
00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:20,919
Speaker 1: Joe can name them out loud just fine. So he

639
00:35:21,080 --> 00:35:23,160
Speaker 1: you know, you show him the word car or a

640
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:25,560
Speaker 1: picture of a car. He says car. Show him the

641
00:35:25,600 --> 00:35:28,600
Speaker 1: word grapes or picture of grapes. He says grapes. Everything

642
00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:30,920
Speaker 1: seems normal because it's all going to the left hemisphere,

643
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:33,800
Speaker 1: and that's the hemisphere that talks. You show a word

644
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:36,760
Speaker 1: to the right brain, only in this case, the word

645
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:40,400
Speaker 1: pan flashes on the far left side of the screen,

646
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: and suddenly Joe is stumped. Uh just based on my read,

647
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:47,920
Speaker 1: it looks to me like he seems to be aware

648
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:51,399
Speaker 1: that he saw something, Like there's a kind of recognition

649
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:54,080
Speaker 1: that it looks to me at least like he is

650
00:35:54,080 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 1: aware something appeared but can't say what it is. And

651
00:35:57,560 --> 00:35:59,719
Speaker 1: with a little shrug and a shaking of his head,

652
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:03,600
Speaker 1: he says, I didn't see it. But then Gazzaniga has

653
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:06,959
Speaker 1: him close his eyes and draw with his left hand,

654
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:09,880
Speaker 1: which is controlled mostly by the right hemisphere, and his

655
00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:15,759
Speaker 1: left hand draws a pan. Again legitimate chills, And of course,

656
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:17,640
Speaker 1: after he draws it and looks at it with both eyes,

657
00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:19,480
Speaker 1: he can say, yeah, I saw a pan, But the

658
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:22,400
Speaker 1: part of his brain that talks didn't seem to know

659
00:36:22,520 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 1: he'd seen a pan until after his left hand drew it.

660
00:36:26,719 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 1: Another type of experiment they carried out. You take a

661
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 1: split brain patient and simultaneously show two different pictures on

662
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:36,160
Speaker 1: the two to the two different hemispheres. You show a

663
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:39,600
Speaker 1: hammer to the left hemisphere and you show a saw

664
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:42,440
Speaker 1: to the right hemisphere and you ask what did you see.

665
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:45,240
Speaker 1: Of course, the speaking part of the brain says hammer.

666
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:47,759
Speaker 1: The person says I saw a hammer. But then when

667
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 1: asked to draw with the left hand, the patient draws

668
00:36:51,080 --> 00:36:54,200
Speaker 1: a saw and you ask them why did you do that,

669
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:56,399
Speaker 1: and the patient in this one case, the case of Joe,

670
00:36:56,440 --> 00:36:59,200
Speaker 1: says I don't know. Now. In other cases like this

671
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:02,040
Speaker 1: version of this test, sometimes the speaking part of the

672
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:04,879
Speaker 1: brain will not just say I don't know, but will

673
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 1: actually seem to make up stories about why their brain

674
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 1: produced a certain output that the left part of the brain,

675
00:37:12,680 --> 00:37:15,440
Speaker 1: the speaking part, doesn't seem to understand, and they'll just

676
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 1: confabulate an explanation. Well, you know, they might say, well,

677
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:22,719
Speaker 1: because you know, I I was thinking about this other thing,

678
00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:25,359
Speaker 1: or because you said this thing earlier, or something, well

679
00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:29,239
Speaker 1: that makes sense. I mean, it's almost like a supernatural experience, right,

680
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:32,560
Speaker 1: and uh. And you know, logically you can, you know,

681
00:37:32,600 --> 00:37:34,520
Speaker 1: try and find some sort of answer to it. But

682
00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:36,719
Speaker 1: the answer you give, and apparently the I mean, there's

683
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:39,600
Speaker 1: no indication that these people were just consciously lying about

684
00:37:39,640 --> 00:37:42,279
Speaker 1: their motivations. The answer you give, and apparently the answer

685
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 1: you seem to believe is not true. It is just

686
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:48,520
Speaker 1: like you. You can come up with explanations for your

687
00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:51,640
Speaker 1: own behavior that are completely wrong, and we can show

688
00:37:51,680 --> 00:37:54,880
Speaker 1: why they're wrong, but you are not aware that they're wrong.

689
00:37:55,239 --> 00:37:58,839
Speaker 1: You can be wrong about your own mind. And even

690
00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:01,799
Speaker 1: without a split brain, of course, humans are are very

691
00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:04,640
Speaker 1: capable of of of coming up with false reasons for

692
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 1: whatever they believe or whatever they did. Oh, absolutely, yeah,

693
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:09,400
Speaker 1: I think that's entirely correct. And that's sort of what

694
00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:12,520
Speaker 1: I what I'm thinking we might be able to extrapolate here.

695
00:38:13,160 --> 00:38:15,000
Speaker 1: So one of the most amazing things to me about

696
00:38:15,040 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 1: this kind of research is uh is that this can

697
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:20,720
Speaker 1: happen to the brain. For the most part, nobody seems

698
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 1: to notice. It takes a lab experiment like this to

699
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:26,920
Speaker 1: draw it out. Like not the people who interact with

700
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 1: the split brain patient. Remember that family members usually report

701
00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:34,239
Speaker 1: no major changes in personality or cognitive ability. As David

702
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:37,520
Speaker 1: Wollman points out in his Nature article, the patients themselves

703
00:38:37,680 --> 00:38:41,120
Speaker 1: say they quote never reported feeling anything less than whole,

704
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:44,799
Speaker 1: and in the words of Michael Gazzaniga, the severed hemispheres

705
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:47,800
Speaker 1: do not seem to notice that they have been severed.

706
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,880
Speaker 1: And they don't report missing each other. So this raises

707
00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 1: so many questions. First of all, why are they connected

708
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:57,400
Speaker 1: in the first place If they can be severed like

709
00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:01,319
Speaker 1: this and not seem to notice that, that's an interesting thing, Like,

710
00:39:01,400 --> 00:39:05,319
Speaker 1: what's the reason for this this connection? Second, how is

711
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:07,440
Speaker 1: this possible? Like, how is it possible to cut a

712
00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:09,760
Speaker 1: brain in half and have it not seem to notice

713
00:39:09,760 --> 00:39:13,360
Speaker 1: anything's different and not behave much different? Indeed, I mean,

714
00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 1: even in a light of everything we've talked about, it

715
00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:18,279
Speaker 1: seems it seems kind of impossible. It seems seems like

716
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 1: it's a like like like it's a magic trick, a

717
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:22,920
Speaker 1: grotesque magic trick, but a magic trick in the west. Well,

718
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:25,799
Speaker 1: maybe we should discuss a possible explanation for this after

719
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:31,040
Speaker 1: a break, thank thank Alright, we're back. Okay, So we're

720
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:34,120
Speaker 1: asking the question of how is it possible given these

721
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:38,000
Speaker 1: split brain experiments where uh, you sever the corpus closum,

722
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:40,799
Speaker 1: the two hemispheres of the brain are separated, and now

723
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 1: functions that are dominated by one hemisphere of the brain

724
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:47,520
Speaker 1: or the other can can take place, can go on

725
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 1: independently without the other part of the brain seeming to

726
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 1: be aware and This even leads to stuff like the

727
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:56,759
Speaker 1: right brain being aware of a piece of information that

728
00:39:56,840 --> 00:39:59,880
Speaker 1: motivates action. Like say you show the right brain a picture,

729
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 1: the left hand, which is mainly controlled by the right brain,

730
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,080
Speaker 1: can draw a picture of that thing, and the left

731
00:40:06,120 --> 00:40:08,880
Speaker 1: brain doesn't know why it happened, and the person speaking

732
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:11,920
Speaker 1: gives a maybe a made up explanation of where that

733
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:14,440
Speaker 1: image came from. How is this kind of thing possible?

734
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:17,960
Speaker 1: Gazanica explains it in terms of what he sort of

735
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:22,320
Speaker 1: calls interpreter theory. The interpreter is the idea of the

736
00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:26,440
Speaker 1: part of your brain. Gazaniga thinks this is localized in

737
00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:30,760
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere that comes up with this contrived explanation

738
00:40:31,239 --> 00:40:34,160
Speaker 1: for why your your brain did something that it doesn't

739
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: actually understand. Uh. And we can know in many cases

740
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 1: that this explanation is bunk because we know where the

741
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 1: actual stimulus for the behavior came from. It was shown

742
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:45,280
Speaker 1: to the other half of the brain that the speaking

743
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:47,759
Speaker 1: part of the brain doesn't know about. And so Gazanica's

744
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:51,640
Speaker 1: idea is that this interpreter function, its main role is

745
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 1: to create a sense of self, to sort of weave

746
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:59,440
Speaker 1: an autobiographical narrative about the self that makes sense, even

747
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:02,400
Speaker 1: if it makes sense in a completely false way, that

748
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: does not actually explain the real things that happened in

749
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 1: the real motivations for behavior. It just comes up with

750
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:13,360
Speaker 1: post talk explanations for behaviors. And you know, this reminds

751
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:16,160
Speaker 1: me of Um, I'm sure you've read about this before.

752
00:41:16,600 --> 00:41:19,239
Speaker 1: There's a metaphor that's often used. I don't know where

753
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:20,960
Speaker 1: it comes from in the first place, but sometimes the

754
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:24,920
Speaker 1: psychologist Jonathan Height invokes it of the elephant and the rider,

755
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:28,640
Speaker 1: you know, to explain the conscious and unconscious brain. So

756
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:31,120
Speaker 1: in the case of the unconscious versus the conscious brain,

757
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:33,960
Speaker 1: the conscious mind is a person is like a person

758
00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:37,200
Speaker 1: riding on top of an elephant, and the elephant is

759
00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:40,960
Speaker 1: the unconscious mind. And the writer thinks they are driving,

760
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:44,919
Speaker 1: steering the elephant around, but actually the elephant goes where

761
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:48,120
Speaker 1: it wants, and the writer is just writing right there

762
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:51,279
Speaker 1: along for the ride wherever the elephant goes. Nevertheless, the

763
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:53,960
Speaker 1: writer will always be able to come up with some

764
00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:57,279
Speaker 1: explanation for why they meant to steer the elephant in

765
00:41:57,320 --> 00:42:00,080
Speaker 1: the direction it went right, Like oh yeah, yeah, I

766
00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:01,880
Speaker 1: actually wanted to go over to that mud hole and

767
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 1: get showered in mud because because I was hot and

768
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:07,240
Speaker 1: the mud is cooling me off. Now. But in this scenario,

769
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:09,480
Speaker 1: the elephant, of course is the one calling the shots,

770
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: actually right, I mean, yeah, elephants love mud holes right now.

771
00:42:13,200 --> 00:42:15,440
Speaker 1: Of course, not to be a stickler here to complicate

772
00:42:15,520 --> 00:42:17,400
Speaker 1: the issue, but you could have a mahoot in there.

773
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 1: I believe the term is is mahoot the individual who

774
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: who will sometimes stand to the side and using a

775
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:28,320
Speaker 1: stick to touch different parts of the elephant, um naked

776
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:30,400
Speaker 1: go where it needs to go. Oh well, we know

777
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:33,840
Speaker 1: quite well that often the unconscious mind of a person

778
00:42:33,920 --> 00:42:38,279
Speaker 1: can be controlled by manipulation from the outside without the

779
00:42:38,400 --> 00:42:41,560
Speaker 1: rider being aware that they're not driving. I mean, think

780
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 1: about the ways people are are manipulated in their unconscious

781
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:50,000
Speaker 1: drives and desires by advertising, by media, by drugs, by

782
00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:53,279
Speaker 1: so all of these things are the stick of the mahoot,

783
00:42:53,320 --> 00:42:57,440
Speaker 1: which I'm sure has a particular name that I'm not

784
00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:00,040
Speaker 1: aware of. And then the mahoot is it represents the

785
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 1: interests of corporations and governments and uh and religious groups, etcetera.

786
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:09,799
Speaker 1: It's driving somebody's unconscious mind around while they think they're

787
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:12,520
Speaker 1: the driver. I mean, no matter you know, the elephant

788
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:14,560
Speaker 1: is going to be calling the shots. See whether it's

789
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:17,640
Speaker 1: being manipulated or it's just following its nature. But either way,

790
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:19,359
Speaker 1: the driver is always going to be able to come

791
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 1: up with the story saying, yeah, this is why we

792
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:24,960
Speaker 1: went over here. I have planned it this way all along.

793
00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:28,480
Speaker 1: I wanted to buy this product. Now, this is a

794
00:43:28,560 --> 00:43:30,759
Speaker 1: kind of different case, But the analogy here is that

795
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:34,920
Speaker 1: the talking, explaining, interpreting part of the left brain, according

796
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:39,759
Speaker 1: to Gazaniga's theory, is making up stories about why the

797
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:44,479
Speaker 1: now alien right brain does what it does, which, of course,

798
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:46,560
Speaker 1: it still shares a body so it controls some of

799
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:49,919
Speaker 1: the same limbs and stuff, when the interpreter really has

800
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:52,480
Speaker 1: no idea why the other part of the brain did

801
00:43:52,520 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 1: what it did. Now, I think we should probably take

802
00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:57,920
Speaker 1: a minute to emphasize like the drawbacks and limitations of

803
00:43:57,960 --> 00:44:01,360
Speaker 1: split brain research. One of them is that, as riveting

804
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:04,200
Speaker 1: as I feel like, this kind of thing is um

805
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:07,080
Speaker 1: I think, for one thing, due to the necessity of

806
00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: the small sample sizes and the unusual history of the

807
00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 1: patients involved, this is the kind of research that's better

808
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:17,960
Speaker 1: thought of as a jumping off point to inspire questions

809
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:20,960
Speaker 1: and hypotheses that you should really try to prove through

810
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:24,640
Speaker 1: other means if possible. Like a lot of modern neuroscientists

811
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:27,520
Speaker 1: would probably say that you can learn more with more

812
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:30,640
Speaker 1: confidence from brain imaging studies like f m R I

813
00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:33,600
Speaker 1: and stuff, then you can from a very small cohort

814
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:37,640
Speaker 1: of people with calls. Otomy's right, right, But at the

815
00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:40,200
Speaker 1: same time that that may be true. But I do

816
00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:43,759
Speaker 1: think there's real value in these kind of experiments, specifically

817
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:46,880
Speaker 1: mainly because you can see it, like you can see

818
00:44:47,040 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 1: the human behavior in reality. You can see the implications

819
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:55,360
Speaker 1: of a strange discovery in neuroscience instantiated in the real world.

820
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:58,600
Speaker 1: It's one thing to learn through fmr I. That's something

821
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:02,840
Speaker 1: like different brain reach can function somewhat independently of one another,

822
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:06,560
Speaker 1: almost as multiple brains within the same head that don't

823
00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:08,960
Speaker 1: understand what the other one is doing. You could probably

824
00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:12,000
Speaker 1: show that in some ways through fm R I, But

825
00:45:12,239 --> 00:45:15,560
Speaker 1: the split brain experiments show you the texture and the

826
00:45:15,640 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 1: drama of the experience of a real person dealing with

827
00:45:18,600 --> 00:45:21,760
Speaker 1: these facts about the brain. Other studies could probably find

828
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:24,799
Speaker 1: ways of indicating this, but but it is I think

829
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:28,719
Speaker 1: valuable how these experiments showed the experience of it right,

830
00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:32,360
Speaker 1: like you can actually see somebody in real time dealing

831
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:34,759
Speaker 1: with the fact that they don't understand why their left

832
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:36,920
Speaker 1: hand just did what it did. I was reading a

833
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:39,839
Speaker 1: little a little bit about this. I ran across uh

834
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 1: some material written by a cognitive psychologist, Year Pinto, an

835
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:47,600
Speaker 1: assistant professor at the Psychology department of the University of

836
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:52,280
Speaker 1: Amsterdam in the Netherlands. And uh Pinto and their team

837
00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 1: tested to split brain patients in to see if they

838
00:45:56,440 --> 00:46:00,000
Speaker 1: could respond accurately to objects in the left visual field

839
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 1: perceived by the right brain while also responding verbally or

840
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:05,440
Speaker 1: with the right hand controlled by the left brain. And

841
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:09,320
Speaker 1: Pinto uh Pinto also wrote about this in a piece

842
00:46:09,440 --> 00:46:13,640
Speaker 1: for Ian magazine as well. So Pinto and the and

843
00:46:13,640 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: and the team found that they could be that the

844
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:19,320
Speaker 1: individual could perceive stimuli and presence in either side of

845
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: the visual field, but that they couldn't compare stimuli across

846
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:25,280
Speaker 1: the midline of the visual field. When the stimulus appeared

847
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:27,960
Speaker 1: in the left field, they were better at indicating its

848
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:31,400
Speaker 1: visual properties attention, and when it appeared in the right

849
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:34,200
Speaker 1: visual field, they were better at labeling it. So, you know,

850
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:38,040
Speaker 1: coming back to a language, here's how Pinto summed it

851
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:39,719
Speaker 1: up in Ian magazine. I just want to read a

852
00:46:39,719 --> 00:46:42,440
Speaker 1: passage from this because I think it it punctuates a

853
00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 1: lot of what we're talking about here. Quote. Based on

854
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 1: these findings, we have proposed a new model of the

855
00:46:47,680 --> 00:46:50,319
Speaker 1: split brain syndrome. When you split the brain, you still

856
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:53,279
Speaker 1: end up with only one person. However, this person experiences

857
00:46:53,360 --> 00:46:57,200
Speaker 1: two streams of visual information, one for each visual field,

858
00:46:57,360 --> 00:46:59,760
Speaker 1: and that person is unable to integrate the two streams.

859
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 1: It is as if he watches an out of sync movie,

860
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:05,080
Speaker 1: but not with the audio and video out of sync. Rather,

861
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 1: the two UNSYNCD streams are both video. And there's more.

862
00:47:09,440 --> 00:47:13,280
Speaker 1: While the previous model provided strong evidence for materialism, split

863
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 1: the brain, split the person, the current understanding seems to

864
00:47:17,080 --> 00:47:20,319
Speaker 1: only deepen the mystery of consciousness. You split the brain

865
00:47:20,360 --> 00:47:23,080
Speaker 1: into two halves, and yet you still have only one person.

866
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:26,839
Speaker 1: How does a brain consisting of many modules create just

867
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:31,080
Speaker 1: one person? And how do split brainers operate as one

868
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:34,719
Speaker 1: when these parts are not even talking to each other. Now,

869
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 1: this study, I think, does add some interesting nuance to

870
00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:39,799
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about before. One thing, I feel

871
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:41,799
Speaker 1: like I don't maybe I'm just missing something. I feel

872
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:45,880
Speaker 1: like Pinto is setting up this model as like, uh,

873
00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:49,839
Speaker 1: as like a counterpoint to the idea of of what

874
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 1: Spery and Gazzaniga discovered. But it seems actually to me

875
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:54,839
Speaker 1: kind of in line with what they discovered, like the

876
00:47:54,880 --> 00:47:59,279
Speaker 1: idea that that our consciousness is very mysterious. I mean,

877
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:02,399
Speaker 1: I think Spery Gazaniga would say that despite being able

878
00:48:02,440 --> 00:48:05,319
Speaker 1: to produce these behaviors that look from the outside like

879
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:08,759
Speaker 1: as if they're from two different people. Uh, the experience

880
00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:11,640
Speaker 1: of the patient, as they've always reported, is that they

881
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:14,239
Speaker 1: feel like a normal, whole person that nothing seems to

882
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:18,200
Speaker 1: have changed to them, right. I think in both cases though,

883
00:48:18,320 --> 00:48:20,640
Speaker 1: it just you end up in this weird conundrum almost,

884
00:48:20,640 --> 00:48:25,120
Speaker 1: this paradox, this idea that the single person we feel

885
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:28,080
Speaker 1: that we are is in some ways too And in

886
00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:32,480
Speaker 1: these cases where we see evidence of of seem to

887
00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:35,719
Speaker 1: see two evidence of what you could you know, call

888
00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:39,200
Speaker 1: two minds within one brain, they're still functioning as one.

889
00:48:39,200 --> 00:48:42,520
Speaker 1: They are still one. And so yeah, the paradox of

890
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:45,320
Speaker 1: that which is one seems too and that which is

891
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:48,120
Speaker 1: too seems one or more than two. Yeah, I mean

892
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:50,799
Speaker 1: that we've got the two hemispheres of the brain but

893
00:48:50,920 --> 00:48:55,120
Speaker 1: remember that the hemispheres are each full of you know, modules,

894
00:48:55,160 --> 00:48:58,200
Speaker 1: and like they're full of millions of neurons and they're

895
00:48:58,239 --> 00:49:01,080
Speaker 1: that are working in different networks and jules to accomplish

896
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:03,760
Speaker 1: different goals. And so I think one of the lessons

897
00:49:03,800 --> 00:49:06,800
Speaker 1: is that definitely different parts of the brain can behave

898
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:11,880
Speaker 1: and generate behaviors independently. And somehow you are here and

899
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:15,200
Speaker 1: you end up thinking I am a person. There's one

900
00:49:15,280 --> 00:49:18,840
Speaker 1: of me, but there's a lot of different independent stuff

901
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 1: going on inside whatever makes you. Yeah, I come back

902
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:25,799
Speaker 1: to that Hunter S. Thompson Warren Yvon quote, you're a

903
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:29,040
Speaker 1: whole different person when you're scared. Uh and in because

904
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:32,320
Speaker 1: in some because in to some extent, as we've discussed,

905
00:49:32,320 --> 00:49:34,200
Speaker 1: you are a different person. You're at least a different

906
00:49:34,280 --> 00:49:37,520
Speaker 1: version of the person. Uh So, yeah, how many how

907
00:49:37,560 --> 00:49:39,440
Speaker 1: many us are there? Really? Well? I think we can

908
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:42,760
Speaker 1: explore this more in the second episode, but this really

909
00:49:42,800 --> 00:49:46,520
Speaker 1: should give us some questions to think about, questions about

910
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:51,560
Speaker 1: whether our idea of a person or a self is

911
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:55,840
Speaker 1: really an accurate understanding of what brains are like, or

912
00:49:56,040 --> 00:49:59,840
Speaker 1: is it just a is it just a convenient illusion?

913
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:03,239
Speaker 1: And that is some stuff to blow your mind or

914
00:50:03,360 --> 00:50:06,080
Speaker 1: minds if you will. Hey, if you want to check

915
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 1: out more episodes of the show while you're waiting for

916
00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:10,920
Speaker 1: the next episode to drop, head on over to Stuff

917
00:50:10,960 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we'll find

918
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:14,880
Speaker 1: them all. That's what we'll find links to our various

919
00:50:14,880 --> 00:50:17,279
Speaker 1: social media accounts. Hey, and I want to mention again

920
00:50:17,360 --> 00:50:21,120
Speaker 1: check out Invention at invention pod dot com. That is

921
00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:22,960
Speaker 1: our other show that comes out on Mondays where we

922
00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 1: discuss the crazy inventions and sometimes it seemingly very mundane

923
00:50:26,760 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 1: inventions that change the way we live our lives, that

924
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:32,080
Speaker 1: changed the world. We just recently started a series on

925
00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:34,560
Speaker 1: the Death Ray, which turned out to be far more

926
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:37,880
Speaker 1: fascinating than we even imagined it would be. So don't

927
00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:42,480
Speaker 1: just check out Invention, subscribe, friends, subscribe, that's right. And Hey,

928
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:44,120
Speaker 1: if you want to help out the show that you

929
00:50:44,160 --> 00:50:46,600
Speaker 1: already subscribe to Stuff to Blow your Mind, rate and

930
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:48,400
Speaker 1: review us wherever you have the power to do so.

931
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:50,560
Speaker 1: That really helps us out. Another way to help us

932
00:50:50,560 --> 00:50:51,799
Speaker 1: out is if you want to check out our merch

933
00:50:51,880 --> 00:50:55,239
Speaker 1: store pick up some stickers or a T shirt with

934
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:57,880
Speaker 1: our logo or some of these cool designs that have

935
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:01,240
Speaker 1: been spun off of past episodes. Huge thanks as always

936
00:51:01,280 --> 00:51:05,040
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison.

937
00:51:05,200 --> 00:51:06,880
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

938
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:09,680
Speaker 1: directly with feedback on this episode or any other, to

939
00:51:09,880 --> 00:51:12,320
Speaker 1: suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

940
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:15,120
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how

941
00:51:15,160 --> 00:51:27,680
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

942
00:51:27,719 --> 00:51:52,880
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com.