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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for a vault episode, a classic episode of Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. This is a part one of

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Speaker 1: our exploration of the split brain experiments. This episode was

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Speaker 1: originally published January. If you have not listened to these episodes,

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Speaker 1: you've probably listened to episodes where we refer back to him,

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Speaker 1: or even older episodes where we kind of laid the

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Speaker 1: ground work for actually doing this exploration, because this is

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Speaker 1: an important topic. You know, how does our brain work,

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Speaker 1: What happens and what is revealed when there is a

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Speaker 1: division in the brain when hemispheres are separated from each other.

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Speaker 1: There's some groundbreaking experiments that we cover in these episodes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this pair of episodes is one of my favorites, and

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Speaker 1: we hope you enjoy it. The powers of Hide seem

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Speaker 1: to have grown with the sickliness of Jackal, and certainly

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Speaker 1: the hate that now divide did them was equal on

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Speaker 1: each side. With Jekyll, it was a thing of vital instinct.

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Speaker 1: He had now seen the full deformity of that creature

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Speaker 1: that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness,

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Speaker 1: and was co heir with him to death and beyond

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Speaker 1: these links of community, which in themselves made the most

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Speaker 1: poignant part of his distress. He thought of hide for

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Speaker 1: all his energy of life, as of something not only

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Speaker 1: hellish but inorganic. This was the shocking thing that the

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Speaker 1: slime of the pit seemed to utter, cries and voices,

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Speaker 1: that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned, that what was

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Speaker 1: dead and had no shape should usurp the offices of life.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: works Dot Carl, Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow

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Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe

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Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. Why are you reading Robert Lewis even Sanadas? Oh?

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Speaker 1: Because that's from the strange case of Dr Jackal and

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

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

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Speaker 1: two 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 going

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

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, Robert Louis Stevenson was a fabulous

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Speaker 1: writer and he's he's one of those authors that you

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Speaker 1: can read today and it holds up so well. Did

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Speaker 1: they ever make a good Jekyl and Hyde movie. It's

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Speaker 1: been a very long time since I've saw it, but

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Speaker 1: there was an adaptation and may have been a TV

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Speaker 1: adaptation with Michael Caine Michael Kine. Yeah, and I remember

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Speaker 1: really loving that and being quite disturbed by it as

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Speaker 1: a child. Now, I was thinking there had to be

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Speaker 1: a Jekyl and Hyde with Tim Curry as Jacky and Hide.

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Speaker 1: But I think maybe I'm confusing that with the Muppet

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Speaker 1: Treasure Island where he's uh, you're thinking of the Muppet

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Speaker 1: Jackal and high. He's long, John self man, that scene

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Speaker 1: where he tramples Kermit to death is brutal. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so so we are. We are beginning with kind of

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Speaker 1: an erroneous model. But but I think helpful and because

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Speaker 1: it is often easy to think of the brain as

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Speaker 1: the thing itself, right, we fall into this center our

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Speaker 1: mode of of of of you know, the thinking of

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Speaker 1: the brain body relationship as being a rider and its horse,

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Speaker 1: when instead it is more this idea of a centaur.

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Speaker 1: This this this one single entity, um, you know, and honestly,

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Speaker 1: we see 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 on lockdown. Uh, you know, think of our imaginings,

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Speaker 1: our inner thoughts versus our outer smile and then they're

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Speaker 1: all those disembodied brains and science fiction right from Crying

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Speaker 1: and his robot body and teenaging Ninja Turtles to the

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Speaker 1: Brain that Wouldn't Die Cane and RoboCop to one of

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

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Speaker 1: favorites as well, greatest of all time Lovecraft, the Whisper

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Speaker 1: and Darkness, and so many Doctor Who characters, is especially

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Speaker 1: the Daleks brain guy from MST three K. We just

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

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Speaker 1: brain as they just sort of the central human thought experience.

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

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

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Speaker 1: of a great illustration of Daniel Dennett's short story thought experiment,

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Speaker 1: where am I I wonder if there was any connection there,

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Speaker 1: so I gonna have to have to have to reach

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Speaker 1: out to the MST guys on that. You know, there

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

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Speaker 1: from him as somewhere else. Um, of course, we know

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

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Speaker 1: It's affected by a host of outside influences, including all

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Speaker 1: sorts of environmental nervous stimuli. And we're learning more and

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

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

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Speaker 1: away all of that, even we're actually to become a

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

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Speaker 1: two or or any of these sci fi visions take

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Speaker 1: out all that external stuff just the brain, we still

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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, or maybe sort of like different programs that

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Speaker 1: run on that computer. But at least to 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 more harmful.

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Speaker 1: But if you have, if you have a better understanding

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Speaker 1: of how computer actually works, it could perhaps be a

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Speaker 1: more helpful metaphor Cuttle cat cuttle fish to the second

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Speaker 1: oil Age Kingdom with or darkness. I don't dispute the eurostata,

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Speaker 1: but if he's down here, we know not blood but darkness,

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Speaker 1: the earth's black riches. No I could taste it on

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Speaker 1: my lips. Today, I want to talk to you about

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Speaker 1: the science of transgenesis terms genesist show. Now. I wanted

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Speaker 1: to to I thoink it would be helpful to just

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Speaker 1: go ahead and consider one particular question right up top now.

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Speaker 1: And we've certainly received questions like this following episodes in

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Speaker 1: which brain hemispheres are discussed, such as our discussions on

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Speaker 1: the bicameral mind hypothesis or the alphabet in the Goddess.

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Speaker 1: Because there's this kind of pop understanding, right that each

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

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

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Speaker 1: have right brain people, left brain people, and that when

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Speaker 1: that we can reconnect with our less favored hemisphere. Now,

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Speaker 1: there certainly are some pieces of evidence that we're gonna

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Speaker 1: look at in this episode that certain functions of human

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Speaker 1: life are strongly lateralized in one half of the brain

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Speaker 1: or the other, but they're not necessarily these functions or

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Speaker 1: personality traits that are understood in popular consciousness, like logic

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Speaker 1: and creativity, right like taking or that you're gonna take

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Speaker 1: some sort of a quiz online and find out if

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Speaker 1: you're a right or lefty in terms of your brain. Now,

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Speaker 1: a lot of these ideas apparently were popularized by nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy nine book titled Drawing on the Right Side of

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Speaker 1: the Brain by Betty Edwards uh and and the downstream

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Speaker 1: myth that kind of you know, took over a popular

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Speaker 1: culture for a little bit. There is that, yeah, you

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Speaker 1: had left side logic, right side creativity, And even in

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Speaker 1: people who know better people, we still talk like this.

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Speaker 1: I've noticed that I use this metaphor even though I

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Speaker 1: know it's wrong. Like I will sometimes think of people

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Speaker 1: as being very right brained or very left brained, even

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Speaker 1: though that I know that that I've read before about

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Speaker 1: how that's not correct. Well, likewise, if I hear it

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Speaker 1: mentioned sanny yoga class, I'm going to be less inclined.

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to be the jerk in the yoga

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Speaker 1: class that like perks up and says, actually there's some

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Speaker 1: interesting you know, I'm gonna set back and enjoy the

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Speaker 1: class because because it's one of those things that can

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Speaker 1: can feel true, right. But the idea goes back further

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Speaker 1: than this particular book. I mean, it goes back to

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Speaker 1: some of the earlier discoveries that we're going to discuss

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Speaker 1: here about hemispheric division. Um. You know, the ideas of

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Speaker 1: neurologist Paul Broca who lived eighteen four through eighty French

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Speaker 1: neurologist or Carl Vernica who lived who live eighteen forty

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Speaker 1: eight through nineteen o five, a German. They studied patients

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Speaker 1: who had communication troubles due to brain injury um, such

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Speaker 1: as you know, left temporal lobe injuries, and they figured

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Speaker 1: that this was the language center. Thus language was left

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Speaker 1: hemisphere focus. And this is one thing that actually has

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Speaker 1: been more born out by good research in in the

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Speaker 1: history of neuroscience, is that one thing it's very clear

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Speaker 1: the left hemisphere of the brain does, is it is

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Speaker 1: dominant in language function. Yes, it's not that the right

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

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

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Speaker 1: hemisphere do. Right. Uh, now, we we kicked off the

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Speaker 1: episode with reading from Robert Louis Stevenson against Scottish author.

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Speaker 1: He lived eighteen fifty eight. And according to neuroscientist Elizabeth Waters,

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Speaker 1: who's put together some you know, wonderful ted talks and

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Speaker 1: ted ed videos about this, uh this, this, uh this topic,

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Speaker 1: she points out that Robert Lewis Stevenson, in his book

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Speaker 1: Strange Case of Dr Checkl and Mr Hyde, presented the

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Speaker 1: notion of a logical left hemisphere that is in combat

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

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Speaker 1: struggle with an emotional right hemisphere, and uh it's It's

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Speaker 1: also worth noting that Robert Lewis Stevenson was also inspired

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Speaker 1: by two popular French cases of individuals who exhibited dual personalities,

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Speaker 1: uh their name. They were credited as being uh Felida

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Speaker 1: X and Sergeant Fay. And these were apparently cases that

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Speaker 1: were really you know, well covered in French and British

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Speaker 1: press at the time. You know, it's kind of popular

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Speaker 1: science influencing, uh, popular science fiction. Do you have any

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Speaker 1: sense of whether what was presented to the public about

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Speaker 1: these cases was largely accurate or was mis leading? I don't,

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Speaker 1: but I'd love to go back and look at it,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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 Treasure Island, you know, his adventure

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

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Speaker 1: a pay sand 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 like the side ruled by passion and

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

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Speaker 1: 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 as 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, a Spock or

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

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Speaker 1: Trip universe. To be clear, though, Yeah, the brain is

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

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Speaker 1: the hypothalamus, the thalamus, and the brainstem. They're also organized

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

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

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

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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 arms and legs. For instance, the right hemisphere

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

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Speaker 1: left hemisphere controls the right armand leg. Now I have

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Speaker 1: read that in a way like both hemispheres can in

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Speaker 1: some way to some degree control both arms. But that

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Speaker 1: when he gets done to like fine motor control of

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Speaker 1: like controlling the actions of the hand especially, that's where

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Speaker 1: he gets really lateralized and like it's really going to

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Speaker 1: be your right rain that's controlling what your left hand

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Speaker 1: does with its fingers. Now, a more complex example is

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Speaker 1: in but one that's extremely important is each eye has

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

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

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Speaker 1: sent to the left hemisphere. Now, this can also be

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

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Speaker 1: places that where like the left eye goes to the

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

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Speaker 1: And that's not quite right either, because both hemispheres can

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Speaker 1: get some information from both eyes. But it has to

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Speaker 1: do with the side of the visual field that you're

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Speaker 1: talking a right, So like stuff that you perceive over

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Speaker 1: to the left part of what you're looking at that

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Speaker 1: goes to the right hemisphere, and stuff you perceive over

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Speaker 1: in the right area of what you're looking at to

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

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Speaker 1: the left hemisphere. And then our visual experience of reality

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Speaker 1: it comes together from these two feeds. Movement and vision

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Speaker 1: depend in on this uni hemispheric relationship. Now, why do

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

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Speaker 1: don't you just go straight up parallel? It's one of

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Speaker 1: those things about the humanivice. It 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're most active. But we can't easily extend

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Speaker 1: this idea to other aspects of cognition, and certainly not

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Speaker 1: to the overall human experience or things like pure logical

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

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

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Speaker 1: in one way or another, and one of them, obviously

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

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Speaker 1: especially complex language and the power of speech. There's some

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Speaker 1: research indicating that like the right brain might be able

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Speaker 1: to have a sort of simple lexicon or understand very

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Speaker 1: simple bits of language, but if you want to generate

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Speaker 1: a sentence like speak one out loud, or understand complex

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Speaker 1: instructions in language, this is usually going to be dominated

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Speaker 1: by processes in the left hemisphere. And we should also

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Speaker 1: say that everything we say about hemisphere is in this

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Speaker 1: episode is going to be for most cases. There there

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Speaker 1: cases where this is reversed, where people have like the

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Speaker 1: switching of which hemisphere is dominant, but we're talking about

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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 neuroscigned, as Elizabeth Waters has pointed out

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

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Speaker 1: distinct notions. You know, they're deeply interlinks. Yeah, Like being

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Speaker 1: good at logic is in many cases being a certain

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Speaker 1: type of creative. Yeah, I mean, what you might dismiss

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Speaker 1: is just a really logical exercise, like safe solving a

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Speaker 1: complex math problem that may well require that will require

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Speaker 1: some creative thinking. Likewise, a creative endeavor like say, writing

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Speaker 1: a poem, finishing a novel, coming up with a cool joke, whatever,

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Speaker 1: you know, those are gonna going to be activities that

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Speaker 1: also involve logic. In fact, some of what we're going

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Speaker 1: to discuss in this pair of episodes in in the

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Speaker 1: neuroscience research turns this whole thing on its head in

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Speaker 1: a way, because the left part of the brain that's

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Speaker 1: more dominant in exercises involving speech and language often tends

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Speaker 1: to be the more creative one in explaining behaviors. Right

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Speaker 1: it's the one that tends to interpret and come up

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Speaker 1: with explanations for things, as will as well talk about

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Speaker 1: later on, which is a creative exercise, whereas the right

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Speaker 1: brain tends to more often be the part of the

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Speaker 1: brain that records experiences accurately without creating explanations for them exactly.

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Speaker 1: And but but certainly, if I'm gonna, you know, drive

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Speaker 1: home anything, we want to point out that that the

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Speaker 1: creativity logic anything that employs these these two loose idea,

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Speaker 1: you know, buckets of of of cognition. You know, these

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Speaker 1: are going to be products of whole brain cognition like

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Speaker 1: our our the brain is all these areas of the

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Speaker 1: brain are working together, uh to create this effect. Now,

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Speaker 1: ultimately in this episode we're going to be asking what

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Speaker 1: happens when you cut those two hemispheres of the brain apart. Yes,

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Speaker 1: but I guess we'll have to get to that after

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Speaker 1: a break. Than alright, we're back now. Before we get

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: point point holding a jar are containing the noted scientist's

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Speaker 1: brain weight 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 then

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Speaker 1: thinking about like what you know, talking He talks a

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Speaker 1: bit 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 story,

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

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Speaker 1: around and their car chases, Sagan's trying to get it

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

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Speaker 1: Dante Skull shows up as well. Oh nice, so broken.

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Speaker 1: 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 habilists. Columbia University anthropologist

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Speaker 1: Ralph Holloway Sagan sided us 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 paleol anthropologist Philip Tobias also made this claim,

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Speaker 1: though according to Suzanne 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 A's a discovery here, broke his 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 the 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 now?

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Speaker 1: Just to throw in the nowadays, you hear more talk

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Speaker 1: of networks as opposed to regions again, getting in this

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Speaker 1: idea that that that that we're looking at at a

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Speaker 1: network of of of different systems and not individual areas

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Speaker 1: that are just doing all the heavy lifting. Yeah, your

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Speaker 1: brain is less like a computer maybe in more like

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Speaker 1: the internet, right, but a conscious internet. That's scary. Uh

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

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Speaker 1: then it takes physical form via three D printers. Right,

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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, both thus the Vernica,

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Speaker 1: uh he was he has another area of the brain

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Speaker 1: that'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.

430
00:24:09,480 --> 00:24:11,040
Speaker 1: And I know you're out there saying, when are you

431
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:13,400
Speaker 1: going to cut the brain in half? Robert, I think

432
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:16,240
Speaker 1: it's time. We've got to make the incision. That's right,

433
00:24:16,280 --> 00:24:19,520
Speaker 1: And what better time to just slice the human brain

434
00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:22,520
Speaker 1: in half than the nineteen sixties and seventies. It's really perfect.

435
00:24:22,520 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 1: I mean, you could really almost it's tempting to just

436
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:28,040
Speaker 1: want to think like a left brain, rightlin brain, old

437
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:31,119
Speaker 1: fashioned idea and have like the nineteen sixties hemisphere, in

438
00:24:31,119 --> 00:24:34,520
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies hemisphere. Right, there's just something something perfect

439
00:24:34,560 --> 00:24:38,400
Speaker 1: about the post revolutionary hemisphere. Uh no, No, So we're

440
00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about the research of neuroscientists named Roger

441
00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 1: Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga. And so actually the brain cutting

442
00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:48,520
Speaker 1: started in the nineteen forties, but it was in the

443
00:24:48,560 --> 00:24:52,439
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties that the research on people with severed hemispheres

444
00:24:52,520 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 1: really got going, that's right. And they discovered something that's

445
00:24:56,040 --> 00:24:59,199
Speaker 1: that was seemingly amazing that if you split the brain,

446
00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:02,919
Speaker 1: you that you essentially split the person as well in

447
00:25:02,960 --> 00:25:05,480
Speaker 1: a certain sense and not in another sense. And we'll

448
00:25:05,760 --> 00:25:08,200
Speaker 1: have to define that as we go on. But but

449
00:25:08,200 --> 00:25:10,120
Speaker 1: but just think about it for a second. Just the

450
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:12,479
Speaker 1: the promise that the you know, the tease of this

451
00:25:12,560 --> 00:25:15,560
Speaker 1: idea that there would be one person per hemisphere of

452
00:25:15,600 --> 00:25:19,359
Speaker 1: the brain, this division of the self. Getting back to

453
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:22,359
Speaker 1: this idea in a certain sense of myself and the

454
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:26,800
Speaker 1: other guy, right right, Oh, that's right. Uh, the Robert

455
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:29,400
Speaker 1: Louis Stevenson and uh. And this is work they would

456
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:35,640
Speaker 1: have eventually earned Sperry the Nobel Prize in Medicine in Now.

457
00:25:35,840 --> 00:25:39,639
Speaker 1: During this this these decades of research, Sperry performed experiments

458
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:42,879
Speaker 1: on cats, monkeys, and humans and focus a lot of

459
00:25:42,880 --> 00:25:46,880
Speaker 1: attention on the neuron packed corpus colossum that bridges the hemispheres.

460
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:49,800
Speaker 1: This is often described as sort of like a broadband

461
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:54,000
Speaker 1: internet cable, like an internet backbone, fiber optic, or something

462
00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:57,119
Speaker 1: that connects the two hemispheres together and enables most of

463
00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:00,880
Speaker 1: the exchange of information between them. Right now, with non

464
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:04,480
Speaker 1: human animals, he surgically split the brains, producing what he

465
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 1: called a split brain, in which each side seemed to

466
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,919
Speaker 1: function independently of the other. And he also found that

467
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:14,520
Speaker 1: an animal with a split brain could memorize double the information.

468
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:16,919
Speaker 1: Oh I didn't read that. Yeah, that was a tidbit

469
00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:20,359
Speaker 1: I ran across creepy now. Obviously him not being a

470
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:23,919
Speaker 1: mad scientist villain in like a serial in a comic

471
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:27,280
Speaker 1: book or something. He didn't split human brains just for experiment,

472
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:29,879
Speaker 1: that's right. Fortunately for him, there were already humans walking

473
00:26:29,920 --> 00:26:33,879
Speaker 1: around with split brains because they had had because there

474
00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:37,840
Speaker 1: were patients who had had their corpus colossum separated, uh

475
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:41,000
Speaker 1: severed as a treatment for epilepsy, and so he was

476
00:26:41,040 --> 00:26:43,119
Speaker 1: able to get a number of these individuals to volunteer

477
00:26:43,240 --> 00:26:47,119
Speaker 1: for his experiments. Yes, so this procedure was not done

478
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:49,920
Speaker 1: for experiments, obviously, it was done as a medical treatment.

479
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:53,439
Speaker 1: And it's known as a corpus callosodomy, And so the

480
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:56,880
Speaker 1: theory behind it was that an epileptic seizure is sort

481
00:26:56,920 --> 00:26:59,119
Speaker 1: of like a storm of activity in the brain with

482
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:03,119
Speaker 1: too many neurons firing and triggering chaotic activity all throughout

483
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:06,720
Speaker 1: both hemispheres, and the idea was if you cut the

484
00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:11,120
Speaker 1: corpus colossum, if you sever that broadband internet connection between

485
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:14,320
Speaker 1: the two hemispheres of the brain, you limit the ability

486
00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 1: of one of these seizures to spread from one hemisphere

487
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:19,280
Speaker 1: of the brain to the other. And in many cases

488
00:27:19,320 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 1: where severe epilepsy could not be treated by any other means,

489
00:27:22,560 --> 00:27:26,119
Speaker 1: the surgery actually was considered effective, I think, especially later

490
00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 1: versions of the surgery, less so in the forties, more

491
00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 1: so I think in like the sixties on. But this

492
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:36,159
Speaker 1: surgery generally isn't used today because we have on on

493
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:39,479
Speaker 1: the whole safer, better, less radical treatments for epilepsy now.

494
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 1: They're they're drugs that are pretty effective, and there are

495
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:45,880
Speaker 1: less radical surgeries you can do. And it's not known

496
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 1: exactly how many patients ever received a corpus colisotomy, and

497
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:53,440
Speaker 1: history I've seen estimates including somewhere between fifty and a

498
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 1: hundred total patients. I've read Michael Gazaniga estimated that there

499
00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 1: were over a hundred patients who had received And now,

500
00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:04,080
Speaker 1: obviously not all of these patients volunteered for split brain

501
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: neurology research, but some did. And one of the really

502
00:28:08,040 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 1: interesting things to point out is that we'll have to

503
00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:13,879
Speaker 1: keep coming back to this is that despite the radical

504
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:17,520
Speaker 1: nature of this surgical intervention, cutting the two hemispheres apart

505
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:21,720
Speaker 1: and basically preventing them from communicating with one another, most

506
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:25,919
Speaker 1: patients reported that their lives were generally normal after the surgeries.

507
00:28:26,320 --> 00:28:31,000
Speaker 1: Their families did not usually report any major changes in behavior, personality,

508
00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:35,080
Speaker 1: or cognitive ability. Uh. Michael Kazanaga says that generally, quote,

509
00:28:35,240 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 1: you wouldn't know it if you were talking to such

510
00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:40,360
Speaker 1: a patient. Yeah, I've read that. The really the only

511
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: notable results of this, outside of, you know, perhaps some

512
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 1: experimental of the stuff that's gonna come up, was that

513
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 1: they didn't have the seizures anymore. Yeah, like that. That

514
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:52,280
Speaker 1: was the goal, and that was the the the primary

515
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:57,360
Speaker 1: of experiential difference. By and large, people underwent this procedure.

516
00:28:57,440 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 1: It cut the two halves of their brain apart, and

517
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 1: they seemed mostly unchanged. Now. On the other hand, I

518
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 1: have read some anecdotes about changes certain patients faced, especially

519
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:12,400
Speaker 1: right after the surgery, during like an adaptation period. For example,

520
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:16,520
Speaker 1: article in Nature News by David Woolman recounts the experiences

521
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 1: of a patient named Vicky, who received a calasotomy in

522
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:22,840
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine to treat terrible caesar she was having.

523
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:25,000
Speaker 1: There's a story that her seizures were so bad that

524
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: one time she like fell on a stove and burned

525
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:31,400
Speaker 1: her back while she was having one. Um. And so

526
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 1: she says that for the first few months after her surgery,

527
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 1: she would stand in the grocery store trying to pick

528
00:29:37,320 --> 00:29:41,280
Speaker 1: items off of the shelf, but having severe difficulty just

529
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:44,720
Speaker 1: picking up items. She says, quote, I'd reach with my

530
00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 1: right right hand for the thing I wanted, but the

531
00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:50,360
Speaker 1: left would come in and they'd kind of fight, almost

532
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:54,360
Speaker 1: like repelling magnets. Uh. And she would apparently have similar

533
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 1: troubles when trying to get dressed in the morning. Wolman writes, quote,

534
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 1: Vicky couldn't reconcile what she wanted to put on with

535
00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 1: what her hands were doing. Sometimes she ended up wearing

536
00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:07,600
Speaker 1: three outfits at once and then Vicky says, quote, I'd

537
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:09,720
Speaker 1: have to dump all the clothes on the bed to

538
00:30:09,840 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 1: catch my breath and start again. And I've read other

539
00:30:12,680 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: accounts along these lines that a few split brain patients

540
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:18,520
Speaker 1: described things like that this was one image one hand

541
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 1: buttoning up a shirt and the other hand following immediately

542
00:30:22,240 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 1: behind it and unbutton ing all the buttons. But these

543
00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 1: kind of these type of descriptions are apparently not typical.

544
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: Most reports indicate that people's behavior, cognitive ability, personality, all

545
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 1: that is mostly unchanged. And even in Vicki's case, after

546
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 1: about a year, she was mostly back to normal in

547
00:30:39,720 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 1: terms of everyday activities. She says, she could, you know,

548
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:46,880
Speaker 1: slice vegetables, to cook and and operate machines and all that.

549
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 1: And this is in line with other reports. Amazingly, you

550
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 1: can completely sever the connection between the two hemispheres of

551
00:30:53,400 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 1: the brain, and most of the people you do this

552
00:30:55,960 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 1: to function normally in day to day life afterwards, before

553
00:31:00,040 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 1: even get to the other strange stuff we're talking about,

554
00:31:02,240 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 1: that in itself seems crazy. Yeah, I am just always

555
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 1: amazed when you when you hear about the things that

556
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 1: can be done to the brain and the ways that

557
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:15,719
Speaker 1: the brain can can can bounce back and and behave

558
00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 1: just relatively normally or just or seemingly completely normally. Even

559
00:31:20,080 --> 00:31:23,320
Speaker 1: in the face of catastrophic injuries, the brain can often

560
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 1: find a way, the mind uh finds a way. But

561
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:30,520
Speaker 1: of course, despite these reports that people are generally unchanged,

562
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:32,520
Speaker 1: what we're about to talk about is that if you

563
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 1: and what Sperry and Gazaniga discovered is if you apply

564
00:31:35,760 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: some special conditions in the lab, you can see some

565
00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 1: really strange and thrilling things at work in the split

566
00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:44,960
Speaker 1: brain patients. Yeah, the crux of this comes down to

567
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 1: the very visual processing we discussed earlier. Left visual field,

568
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: right side of the brain, right visual side field, left

569
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: side of the brain. So in a split brain, the

570
00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:58,040
Speaker 1: left side of the brain can't see the left field

571
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:00,240
Speaker 1: of vision and the right side of the brain can't

572
00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:03,200
Speaker 1: see the right visual field, or generally can't generally, Yeah,

573
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 1: generally speaking, and we'll we'll get into the meat of

574
00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:07,760
Speaker 1: this in a minute. But but it's going to lead

575
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 1: to split brain cats with eye patches and split brain

576
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:14,440
Speaker 1: monkeys with memorization. Because, as we mentioned again, he did

577
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: conduct animal experiments to see how this UH to to

578
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:21,680
Speaker 1: to reveal what was going on. And the animal experiments

579
00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: were very they produced very strange and fascinating results. But

580
00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:27,840
Speaker 1: you always wonder, well, okay, you know, animal brains are

581
00:32:27,880 --> 00:32:30,719
Speaker 1: just different than human brains, so so what happens with

582
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 1: the actual human So I was reading an account of

583
00:32:33,280 --> 00:32:36,840
Speaker 1: their very first patients, very in Gazzaniga's very first split

584
00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:40,200
Speaker 1: brain patient, uh in that that David Wollman article, and

585
00:32:40,240 --> 00:32:42,480
Speaker 1: it was a man known as w J. A lot

586
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:44,720
Speaker 1: of times these patients are known just by a first

587
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:48,160
Speaker 1: name or by initials, you know, to protect their their identity.

588
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:51,960
Speaker 1: And apparently w J had served as a paratrooper in

589
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:55,000
Speaker 1: World War Two and he suffered a head injury. During

590
00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:57,640
Speaker 1: the fighting, a Nazi had smashed him in the head

591
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 1: with the rifle butt and afterward he experienced severe seizures

592
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:05,440
Speaker 1: and was treated with the callisotomy. And so in nineteen

593
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:10,280
Speaker 1: sixty two, after the surgery, Kazaniga ran visual field experiments

594
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:13,640
Speaker 1: with w J. And what he found was amazing. So

595
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:16,320
Speaker 1: the standard set up of one of these experiments is

596
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: that you have the patient focus on a dot in

597
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:21,880
Speaker 1: the middle of a screen, and then you flash a

598
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:25,800
Speaker 1: visual stimulus in the peripheral visual field on one side

599
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:28,920
Speaker 1: or the other. And the scientists knew from previous research

600
00:33:29,040 --> 00:33:32,280
Speaker 1: that this would mean stimuli shown to the left visual field,

601
00:33:32,440 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 1: as we've been saying, would usually be perceived only by

602
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: the right hemisphere, and stuff shown in the right visual

603
00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:40,480
Speaker 1: field would be perceived only by the left hemisphere. But

604
00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:43,880
Speaker 1: now that the hemispheres can't talk to each other anymore,

605
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 1: what happens? So w J was shown images in his

606
00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:51,240
Speaker 1: left or right visual fields and then asked to press

607
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 1: a button and then asked to say what he saw.

608
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:57,160
Speaker 1: And when an image was shown to his left hemisphere,

609
00:33:57,280 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 1: the part we know is primarily responsible for language, he

610
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:01,640
Speaker 1: had no problems at all. Right, you show the left

611
00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:04,280
Speaker 1: brain whatever you want, a cat or you know, show

612
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:07,440
Speaker 1: him RoboCop, and then they'll press the button to indicate

613
00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:09,759
Speaker 1: they saw something, and he'll say, I saw a RoboCop.

614
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:13,160
Speaker 1: But when they showed an image to w J's right hemisphere,

615
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 1: what he said was that he saw nothing, But strangely enough,

616
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: his left hand, which remember, of course, the left hand

617
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:24,320
Speaker 1: is connected to the right hemisphere, his left hand pressed

618
00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:27,759
Speaker 1: the button when he saw the image, even though the

619
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:30,880
Speaker 1: part of his brain responsible for speech was saying out loud,

620
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:33,960
Speaker 1: I don't see anything. I mean, take take a second

621
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:36,480
Speaker 1: to think about that. Like when I first read that,

622
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:40,759
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, okay, oh, and then it hit

623
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:42,840
Speaker 1: me and I got the chills. I mean, you know,

624
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 1: the hair stands up on the back of my neck. Literally. Yeah,

625
00:34:45,560 --> 00:34:48,719
Speaker 1: Because what we're imagining here is we we read this

626
00:34:48,760 --> 00:34:51,759
Speaker 1: and discussed it is It's not a complete selex like

627
00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:56,080
Speaker 1: separation of self, right, It's like a temporary duality, like

628
00:34:56,120 --> 00:35:00,319
Speaker 1: a flash of duality, where in the very place where

629
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:04,359
Speaker 1: we we want and expect to find some sort of

630
00:35:04,400 --> 00:35:08,160
Speaker 1: continuity of self, well, it's yeah, it's like peeking in

631
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:12,279
Speaker 1: and seeing a quick glimpse of a reality that may

632
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:15,960
Speaker 1: be far more true and accurate a description of how

633
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:18,400
Speaker 1: the brain is than we would like to admit, or

634
00:35:18,440 --> 00:35:21,280
Speaker 1: that normally seems true to us, because again, we always

635
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:24,919
Speaker 1: feel unified and the split brain patients feel unified. Will

636
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 1: revisit this a little more, but they don't report feeling

637
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:30,279
Speaker 1: like two different people. They just feel normal. This is

638
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:33,880
Speaker 1: just how I am. And yet from an objective outsider's

639
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 1: point of view, it's almost as if you've got two

640
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:39,520
Speaker 1: different people taking the test at the same time. One

641
00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:42,719
Speaker 1: is registering I see something with a hand and the

642
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 1: other is saying he doesn't see anything, and yet it

643
00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:49,080
Speaker 1: only seems this way under certain conditions and only from

644
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:51,360
Speaker 1: the outside. Now, if you want to see an example

645
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:53,360
Speaker 1: of this, you can actually see one of these experiments

646
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:57,000
Speaker 1: demonstrated on film. There's like a short documentary segment feature

647
00:35:57,120 --> 00:35:59,719
Speaker 1: that I think he's up on YouTube. Still there's a

648
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:03,160
Speaker 1: patient named to Joe who is working with Kazanega and

649
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: this looks like it's the nineties or so, and uh,

650
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:10,600
Speaker 1: it demonstrates the typical experiment. So you show either words

651
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 1: or pictures to the left brain only, and Joe can

652
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:15,880
Speaker 1: name them out loud just fine. So he you know,

653
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:18,160
Speaker 1: you show him the word car or a picture of

654
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 1: a car. He says car. Show him the word grapes

655
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:23,799
Speaker 1: or picture of grapes. He says grapes. Everything seems normal

656
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:25,920
Speaker 1: because it's all going to the left hemisphere and that's

657
00:36:25,960 --> 00:36:28,799
Speaker 1: the hemisphere that talks. You show a word to the

658
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:33,160
Speaker 1: right brain only. In this case, the word pan flashes

659
00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 1: on the far left side of the screen and suddenly

660
00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 1: Joe is stumped. Uh. Just based on my read, it

661
00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:42,879
Speaker 1: looks to me like he seems to be aware that

662
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:46,200
Speaker 1: he saw something like there's a kind of recognition that

663
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 1: it looks to me at least like he is aware

664
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:52,239
Speaker 1: something appeared but can't say what it is. And with

665
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:54,880
Speaker 1: a little shrug and a shaking of his head, he says,

666
00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:58,720
Speaker 1: I didn't see it. But then Gazanega has him close

667
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 1: his eyes and draw with his left hand, which is

668
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 1: controlled mostly by the right hemisphere, and his left hand

669
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 1: draws a pan. Oh wow, again legitimate chills. And of

670
00:37:10,080 --> 00:37:11,799
Speaker 1: course after he draws it and looks at it with

671
00:37:11,800 --> 00:37:13,359
Speaker 1: both eyes, he can say, yeah, I saw a pan,

672
00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:16,640
Speaker 1: But the part of his brain that talks didn't seem

673
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:19,920
Speaker 1: to know he'd seen a pan until after his left

674
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:23,160
Speaker 1: hand drew it. Another type of experiment they carried out.

675
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: You take a split brain patient and simultaneously show two

676
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:30,160
Speaker 1: different pictures on the two to the two different hemispheres.

677
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:32,759
Speaker 1: You show a hammer to the left hemisphere and you

678
00:37:32,800 --> 00:37:36,120
Speaker 1: show a saw to the right hemisphere, and you ask

679
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:38,480
Speaker 1: what did you see. Of course, the speaking part of

680
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:41,160
Speaker 1: the brain says hammer. The person says, I saw a hammer.

681
00:37:41,760 --> 00:37:44,200
Speaker 1: But then when asked to draw with the left hand,

682
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 1: the patient draws a saw and you ask them why

683
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:50,280
Speaker 1: did you do that? And the patient in this one case,

684
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:52,440
Speaker 1: the case of Joe says I don't know. Now. In

685
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,719
Speaker 1: other cases like this versions of this test, sometimes the

686
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 1: speaking part of the brain will not just say I

687
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 1: don't know, but we'll actually see to make up stories

688
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:05,680
Speaker 1: about why their brain produced a certain output that the

689
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:08,799
Speaker 1: left part of the brain, the speaking part, doesn't seem

690
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:13,239
Speaker 1: to understand, and they'll just confabulate an explanation. Well, you know,

691
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 1: they might say, well, because you know, I was thinking

692
00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:19,080
Speaker 1: about this other thing, or because you said this thing earlier,

693
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 1: or something, well that makes sense. I mean, it's almost

694
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:25,080
Speaker 1: like a supernatural experience, right, and uh, and you know,

695
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 1: logically you can, you know, try and find some sort

696
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 1: of answer to it. But the answer you give, and

697
00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:32,400
Speaker 1: apparently the I mean, there's no indication that these people

698
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:35,879
Speaker 1: were just consciously lying about their motivations. The answer you give,

699
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 1: and apparently the answer you seem to believe is not true.

700
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:42,640
Speaker 1: Is just like you. You can come up with explanations

701
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:45,759
Speaker 1: for your own behavior that are completely wrong, and we

702
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:48,640
Speaker 1: can show why they're wrong, but you are not aware

703
00:38:48,719 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: that they're wrong. You can be wrong about your own mind, right,

704
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 1: and even without a split brain, of course, humans are

705
00:38:55,680 --> 00:38:58,560
Speaker 1: are very capable of of of coming up with false

706
00:38:58,600 --> 00:39:01,879
Speaker 1: reasons for whatever they believe or whatever they did. Oh, absolutely, yeah,

707
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:03,960
Speaker 1: I think that's entirely correct. And that's sort of what

708
00:39:04,040 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 1: I what I'm thinking we might be able to extrapolate here.

709
00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:09,600
Speaker 1: So one of the most amazing things to me about

710
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 1: this kind of research is, uh is that this can

711
00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:15,280
Speaker 1: happen to the brain. For the most part, nobody seems

712
00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:18,799
Speaker 1: to notice. It takes a lab experiment like this to

713
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:21,480
Speaker 1: draw it out like not the people who interact with

714
00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 1: the split brain patient. Remember that family members usually report

715
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:28,799
Speaker 1: no major changes in personality or cognitive ability. As David

716
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:32,080
Speaker 1: Wollman points out in his Nature article, the patients themselves

717
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:35,720
Speaker 1: say they quote never reported feeling anything less than whole.

718
00:39:36,239 --> 00:39:39,400
Speaker 1: And in the words of Michael Gazaniga, the severed hemispheres

719
00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:42,360
Speaker 1: do not seem to notice that they have been severed,

720
00:39:42,640 --> 00:39:46,480
Speaker 1: and they don't report missing each other. So this raises

721
00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:49,600
Speaker 1: so many questions. First of all, why are they connected

722
00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:51,960
Speaker 1: in the first place. If they can be severed like

723
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:55,880
Speaker 1: this and not seem to notice that, that's an interesting thing, like,

724
00:39:55,960 --> 00:39:59,880
Speaker 1: what's the reason for this this connection? Second, how is

725
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 1: as possible? Like, how is it possible to cut a

726
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:04,320
Speaker 1: brain in half and have it not seem to notice

727
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:07,960
Speaker 1: anything's different and not behave much different. Indeed, I mean,

728
00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: even a light of everything we've talked about, it seems

729
00:40:10,520 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 1: it seems kind of impossible. It seems seems like it's

730
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:15,560
Speaker 1: a like like like it's a magic trick, a grotesque

731
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:17,480
Speaker 1: magic trick, but a magic trick in the west. Well,

732
00:40:17,480 --> 00:40:20,359
Speaker 1: maybe we should discuss a possible explanation for this after

733
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:25,920
Speaker 1: a break. Thank alright, we're back. Okay, So we're asking

734
00:40:25,960 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 1: the question of how is it possible given these split

735
00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 1: brain experiments where uh, you sever the corpus closum, the

736
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 1: two hemispheres of the brain are separated, and now functions

737
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:39,160
Speaker 1: that are dominated by one hemisphere of the brain or

738
00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:43,000
Speaker 1: the other can can take place, can go on independently

739
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:45,760
Speaker 1: without the other part of the brain seeming to be aware.

740
00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:48,760
Speaker 1: And this even leads to stuff like the right brain

741
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:52,400
Speaker 1: being aware of a piece of information that motivates action.

742
00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:55,080
Speaker 1: Like say you show the right brain a picture, the

743
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:57,799
Speaker 1: left hand, which is mainly controlled by the right brain,

744
00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 1: can draw a picture of that thing, and the left

745
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 1: brain doesn't know why it happened, And the person speaking

746
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 1: gives a maybe a made up explanation of where that

747
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 1: image came from. How is this kind of thing possible?

748
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 1: Gazonica explains it in terms of what he sort of

749
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:16,920
Speaker 1: calls interpreter theory. The interpreter is the idea of the

750
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:21,040
Speaker 1: part of your brain. Gazaniga thinks this is localized in

751
00:41:21,040 --> 00:41:25,360
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere that comes up with this contrived explanation

752
00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:28,760
Speaker 1: for why your your brain did something that it doesn't

753
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:32,240
Speaker 1: actually understand. Uh. And we can know in many cases

754
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 1: that this explanation is bunk because we know where the

755
00:41:34,680 --> 00:41:37,760
Speaker 1: actual stimulus for the behavior came from. It was shown

756
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:39,840
Speaker 1: to the other half of the brain that the speaking

757
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:42,359
Speaker 1: part of the brain doesn't know about. And so Gazanica's

758
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 1: idea is that this interpreter function, its main role is

759
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:49,120
Speaker 1: to create a sense of self, to sort of weave

760
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:54,040
Speaker 1: an autobiographical narrative about the self that makes sense, even

761
00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:57,000
Speaker 1: if it makes sense in a completely false way, that

762
00:41:57,080 --> 00:42:00,360
Speaker 1: does not actually explain the real things that happened in

763
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:03,600
Speaker 1: the real motivations for behavior. It just comes up with

764
00:42:03,719 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 1: post talk explanations for behaviors. And you know, this reminds

765
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:10,720
Speaker 1: me of m I'm sure you've read about this before.

766
00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:13,799
Speaker 1: There's a metaphor that's often used. I don't know where

767
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:15,560
Speaker 1: it comes from in the first place, but sometimes the

768
00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: psychologist Jonathan Height invokes it of the elephant and the rider,

769
00:42:20,560 --> 00:42:23,200
Speaker 1: you know, to explain the conscious and unconscious brain. So

770
00:42:23,280 --> 00:42:25,680
Speaker 1: in the case of the unconscious versus the conscious brain,

771
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 1: the conscious mind is a person is like a person

772
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:31,799
Speaker 1: riding on top of an elephant, and the elephant is

773
00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 1: the unconscious mind. And the writer thinks they are driving,

774
00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:39,479
Speaker 1: steering the elephant around, but actually the elephant goes where

775
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:42,680
Speaker 1: it wants, and the rider is just riding right there

776
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 1: along for the ride wherever the elephant goes. Nevertheless, the

777
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 1: writer will always be able to come up with some

778
00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:51,880
Speaker 1: explanation for why they meant to steer the elephant in

779
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:54,640
Speaker 1: the direction it went right, like oh, yeah, yeah, I

780
00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:56,480
Speaker 1: actually wanted to go over to that mud hole and

781
00:42:56,520 --> 00:42:59,279
Speaker 1: get showered in mud because because I was hot and

782
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:01,800
Speaker 1: the mud is willing me off now. But in this scenario,

783
00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 1: the elephant, of course, is the one calling the shots.

784
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:07,239
Speaker 1: Actually right, I mean, yeah, elephants love mud holes right

785
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: right now. Of course, not to be a stickler here

786
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:11,720
Speaker 1: to complicate the issue, but you could have a mahoot

787
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 1: in there. I believe the term is is mahoot the

788
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:18,960
Speaker 1: individual who who will sometimes stand to the side and

789
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 1: using a stick to touch different parts of the elephant

790
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:24,600
Speaker 1: um naked go where it needs to go. Oh well,

791
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:27,960
Speaker 1: we know quite well that often the unconscious mind of

792
00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:31,400
Speaker 1: a person can be controlled by manipulation from the outside

793
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:35,920
Speaker 1: without the rider being aware that they're not driving. I mean,

794
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:39,799
Speaker 1: think about the ways people are are manipulated in their

795
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:44,280
Speaker 1: unconscious drives and desires, by advertising, by media, by drugs,

796
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 1: by so all of these things are the stick of

797
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:50,880
Speaker 1: the mahoot, which I'm sure has a particular name that

798
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:54,520
Speaker 1: I'm not aware of. And then the mahoot is represents

799
00:43:54,520 --> 00:43:59,800
Speaker 1: the interests of corporations and governments and uh and religious

800
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:03,560
Speaker 1: grew its, etcetera. It's driving somebody's unconscious mind around while

801
00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 1: they think they're the driver. I mean, no matter you know,

802
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:08,520
Speaker 1: the elephant is going to be calling the shots. See

803
00:44:08,600 --> 00:44:11,600
Speaker 1: whether it's being manipulated or it's just following its nature.

804
00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 1: But either way, the driver is always going to be

805
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:15,520
Speaker 1: able to come up with the story saying, yeah, this

806
00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:18,520
Speaker 1: is why we went over here. I have planned it

807
00:44:18,600 --> 00:44:22,719
Speaker 1: this way all along. I wanted to buy this product. Now,

808
00:44:22,719 --> 00:44:24,799
Speaker 1: this is a kind of different case, but the analogy

809
00:44:24,880 --> 00:44:28,480
Speaker 1: here is that the talking, explaining, interpreting part of the

810
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:33,160
Speaker 1: left brain, according to Gazaniga's theory, is making up stories

811
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:38,600
Speaker 1: about why the now alien right brain does what it does, which,

812
00:44:38,680 --> 00:44:40,920
Speaker 1: of course, it still shares a body so it controls

813
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:43,880
Speaker 1: some of the same limbs and stuff, when the interpreter

814
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 1: really has no idea why the other part of the

815
00:44:46,520 --> 00:44:48,560
Speaker 1: brain did what it did. Now, I think we should

816
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:51,560
Speaker 1: probably take a minute to emphasize like the drawbacks and

817
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:54,960
Speaker 1: limitations of split brain research, one of them is that,

818
00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:57,600
Speaker 1: as riveting as I feel like, this kind of thing

819
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:01,480
Speaker 1: is um I think, for one, due to the necessity

820
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:05,480
Speaker 1: of the small sample sizes and the unusual history of

821
00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:08,839
Speaker 1: the patients involved. This is the kind of research that's

822
00:45:08,920 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 1: better thought of as a jumping off point to inspire

823
00:45:12,040 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 1: questions and hypotheses that you should really try to prove

824
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 1: through other means if possible. Like a lot of modern

825
00:45:18,560 --> 00:45:21,759
Speaker 1: neuroscientists would probably say that you can learn more with

826
00:45:21,880 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 1: more confidence from brain imaging studies like f M R

827
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 1: I and stuff, then you can from a very small

828
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:32,120
Speaker 1: cohort of people with callis Otomy's right, right, but at

829
00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:34,640
Speaker 1: the same time that that may be true. But I

830
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 1: do think there's real value in these kind of experiments,

831
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:41,040
Speaker 1: specifically mainly because you can see it like you can

832
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 1: see the human behavior in reality. You can see the

833
00:45:44,080 --> 00:45:49,319
Speaker 1: implications of a strange discovery and neuroscience instantiated in the

834
00:45:49,320 --> 00:45:52,360
Speaker 1: real world. It's one thing to learn through FMR I

835
00:45:52,560 --> 00:45:56,720
Speaker 1: that something like different brain regions can function somewhat independently

836
00:45:56,800 --> 00:46:00,200
Speaker 1: of one another, almost as multiple brains within the same

837
00:46:00,239 --> 00:46:02,680
Speaker 1: head that don't understand what the other one is doing.

838
00:46:02,760 --> 00:46:05,320
Speaker 1: You could probably show that in some ways through f

839
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:09,000
Speaker 1: m R I, but the split brain experiments show you

840
00:46:09,160 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 1: the texture and the drama of the experience of a

841
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 1: real person dealing with these facts about the brain. Other

842
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:18,160
Speaker 1: studies could probably find ways of indicating this, but but

843
00:46:18,520 --> 00:46:21,680
Speaker 1: it is I think valuable how these experiments show the

844
00:46:21,719 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 1: experience of it right, like you can actually see somebody

845
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:28,040
Speaker 1: in real time dealing with the fact that they don't

846
00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:30,560
Speaker 1: understand why their left hand just did what it did.

847
00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 1: I was reading a little a little bit about this.

848
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:37,319
Speaker 1: I ran across, uh some material written by a cognitive psychologist,

849
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 1: Jaar Pinto, an assistant professor at the Psychology Department of

850
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:46,000
Speaker 1: the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. And uh Pinto

851
00:46:46,160 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 1: and their team tested to split brain patients in to

852
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:53,520
Speaker 1: see if they could respond accurately to objects in the

853
00:46:53,600 --> 00:46:56,120
Speaker 1: left visual field perceived by the right brain, while also

854
00:46:56,160 --> 00:46:58,960
Speaker 1: responding verbally or with the right hand control by the

855
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 1: left brain. And Pinto uh Pinto also wrote about this

856
00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:07,360
Speaker 1: in a piece for Ian magazine as well. So Pinto

857
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:09,719
Speaker 1: and the and and the team found that they could

858
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:13,319
Speaker 1: be that the individual could perceive stimuli and presence in

859
00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:15,320
Speaker 1: either side of the visual field, but that they couldn't

860
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:18,919
Speaker 1: compare stimuli across the midline of the visual field. When

861
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:21,439
Speaker 1: the stimulus appeared in the left field, they were better

862
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:25,520
Speaker 1: at indicating its visual properties attention, and when it appeared

863
00:47:25,520 --> 00:47:28,319
Speaker 1: in the right visual field, they were better at labeling it. So,

864
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:32,520
Speaker 1: you know, coming back to language, here's how Pinto summed

865
00:47:32,520 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 1: it up in Ian magazine. I just want to read

866
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:36,960
Speaker 1: a passage from this because I think it it punctuates

867
00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:39,800
Speaker 1: a lot of what we're talking about here. Quote. Based

868
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: on these findings, we have proposed a new model of

869
00:47:42,160 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: the split brain syndrome. When you split the brain, you

870
00:47:44,680 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: still end up with only one person However, this person

871
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:51,800
Speaker 1: experiences two streams of visual information, one for each visual field,

872
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:54,360
Speaker 1: and that person is unable to integrate the two streams.

873
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 1: It is as if he watches an out of sync movie,

874
00:47:57,320 --> 00:47:59,680
Speaker 1: but not with the audio and video out of sync. Rather,

875
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:03,719
Speaker 1: the two unsinked streams are both video. And There's more.

876
00:48:04,040 --> 00:48:07,840
Speaker 1: While the previous model provided strong evidence for materialism, split

877
00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:11,520
Speaker 1: the brain, split the person, the current understanding seems to

878
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:14,919
Speaker 1: only deepen the mystery of consciousness. You split the brain

879
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:17,640
Speaker 1: into two halves, and yet you still have only one person.

880
00:48:18,000 --> 00:48:21,440
Speaker 1: How does a brain consisting of many modules create just

881
00:48:21,600 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 1: one person? And how do split brainers operate as one

882
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:29,279
Speaker 1: when these parts are not even talking to each other. Now,

883
00:48:29,560 --> 00:48:32,000
Speaker 1: this study, I think, does add some interesting nuance to

884
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:34,399
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about before. One thing, I feel

885
00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:36,399
Speaker 1: like I don't maybe I'm just missing something. I feel

886
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:40,840
Speaker 1: like Pinto is setting up this model as like uh

887
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:44,360
Speaker 1: as like a counterpoint to the idea of of what

888
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:47,239
Speaker 1: Spery and Gazaniga discovered. But it seems actually to me

889
00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 1: kind of in line with what they discovered, like the

890
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:53,879
Speaker 1: idea that that our consciousness is very mysterious. I mean,

891
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:56,719
Speaker 1: I think Spery and Gazaniga would say that despite being

892
00:48:56,760 --> 00:48:59,640
Speaker 1: able to produce these behaviors that look from the outside

893
00:48:59,719 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 1: like as if they're from two different people. Uh, the

894
00:49:02,600 --> 00:49:06,000
Speaker 1: experience of the patient, as they've always reported, is that

895
00:49:06,040 --> 00:49:08,720
Speaker 1: they feel like a normal, whole person, that nothing seems

896
00:49:08,719 --> 00:49:12,239
Speaker 1: to have changed to them. Right. I think in both

897
00:49:12,239 --> 00:49:14,279
Speaker 1: cases though, it just you end up in this weird

898
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 1: conundrum almost, this paradox, this idea that the single person

899
00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:21,919
Speaker 1: we feel that we are is in some ways too

900
00:49:22,480 --> 00:49:26,200
Speaker 1: And in these cases where we see evidence of of

901
00:49:26,640 --> 00:49:30,000
Speaker 1: seemed to see two evidence of what you could you know,

902
00:49:30,080 --> 00:49:33,759
Speaker 1: call two minds within one brain, they're still functioning as one.

903
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:37,400
Speaker 1: They are still one. And so yeah, the paradox of

904
00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:39,920
Speaker 1: that which is one seems too and that which is

905
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:42,719
Speaker 1: too seems one or more than two. Yeah, I mean

906
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:45,360
Speaker 1: that we've got the two hemispheres of the brain. But

907
00:49:45,480 --> 00:49:48,920
Speaker 1: remember that the hemispheres are each full of you know,

908
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:52,040
Speaker 1: modules and the like. They're full of millions of neurons

909
00:49:52,160 --> 00:49:54,960
Speaker 1: and they're that are working in different networks and modules

910
00:49:54,960 --> 00:49:57,840
Speaker 1: to accomplish different goals. And so I think one of

911
00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:00,760
Speaker 1: the lessons is that definitely different parts the brain can

912
00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:06,240
Speaker 1: behave and generate behaviors independently and somehow you are here

913
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:09,440
Speaker 1: and you end up thinking I am a person. There's

914
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:13,000
Speaker 1: one of me, but there's a lot of different independent

915
00:50:13,080 --> 00:50:16,960
Speaker 1: stuff going on inside whatever makes you. Yeah, I come

916
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:20,279
Speaker 1: back to that Hunter S. Thompson Warren Yvon quote, you're

917
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:23,160
Speaker 1: a whole different person when you're scared. Uh and in

918
00:50:23,360 --> 00:50:26,239
Speaker 1: because in some of because in to some extent, as

919
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:28,399
Speaker 1: we've discussed, you are a different person. You're at least

920
00:50:28,400 --> 00:50:31,200
Speaker 1: a different version of the person. Uh So, yeah, how

921
00:50:31,200 --> 00:50:33,759
Speaker 1: many how many you's are there? Really? Well? I think

922
00:50:33,760 --> 00:50:36,399
Speaker 1: we can explore this more in the second episode, but

923
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:40,080
Speaker 1: this really should give us some questions to think about,

924
00:50:40,200 --> 00:50:45,279
Speaker 1: questions about whether our idea of a person or a

925
00:50:45,320 --> 00:50:49,680
Speaker 1: self is really an accurate understanding of what brains are like,

926
00:50:50,320 --> 00:50:54,400
Speaker 1: or is it just a is it just a convenient illusion?

927
00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:57,800
Speaker 1: And that is some stuff to blow your mind or

928
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:00,680
Speaker 1: minds if you will. Hey, if you want to check

929
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:03,120
Speaker 1: out more episodes of the show while you're waiting for

930
00:51:03,160 --> 00:51:05,480
Speaker 1: the next episode to drop, head on over to stuff

931
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:07,719
Speaker 1: to Blow your mind dot com. That's where we'll find

932
00:51:07,719 --> 00:51:09,440
Speaker 1: them all. That's what we'll find links to our various

933
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:11,839
Speaker 1: social media accounts. Hey and I want to mention again,

934
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:15,680
Speaker 1: check out Invention at invention pod dot com. That is

935
00:51:15,680 --> 00:51:17,520
Speaker 1: our other show that comes out on Mondays where we

936
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:22,120
Speaker 1: discuss the crazy inventions and sometimes seemingly very mundane inventions

937
00:51:22,120 --> 00:51:24,439
Speaker 1: that changed the way we live our lives, that changed

938
00:51:24,480 --> 00:51:26,879
Speaker 1: the world. We just recently started a series on the

939
00:51:26,960 --> 00:51:29,799
Speaker 1: Death Ray, which turned out to be far more fascinating

940
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:32,600
Speaker 1: than we even imagined it would be. So don't just

941
00:51:32,760 --> 00:51:37,040
Speaker 1: check out Invention, subscribe, friends, subscribe that's right, and hey,

942
00:51:37,080 --> 00:51:38,680
Speaker 1: if you want to help out the show that you

943
00:51:38,719 --> 00:51:41,160
Speaker 1: already subscribe to, Stuff to blow your mind, rate and

944
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:42,960
Speaker 1: review us wherever you have the power to do so,

945
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:45,120
Speaker 1: that really helps us out. Another way to help us

946
00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:46,399
Speaker 1: out is if you want to check out our merch

947
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:49,799
Speaker 1: store pick up some stickers or a T shirt with

948
00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:52,440
Speaker 1: our logo or some of these cool designs that have

949
00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:55,760
Speaker 1: been spun off of past episodes. Huge thanks as always

950
00:51:55,840 --> 00:51:59,600
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and try Harrison.

951
00:51:59,719 --> 00:52:01,400
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

952
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:04,239
Speaker 1: directly with feedback on this episode or any other, to

953
00:52:04,440 --> 00:52:06,920
Speaker 1: suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

954
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:09,680
Speaker 1: you can email us at Blow the Mind at how

955
00:52:09,760 --> 00:52:22,280
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com for more on this and thousands

956
00:52:22,280 --> 00:52:47,440
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it How Stuff Works dot com