Now I toss another mind bender into the fray. The human brain is actually not one individual persona, but a mixture of various minds interweaved into a single unit. To keep it simple, lets stay with the upper conscientious. In this we have the left and right brains communicating by the corpus callosum. If this white matter is completely severed, for a short time the two hemispheres cannot communicate. The single persona that we all exhibit to the world has been torn asunder into two very different personalities.

The persona that the outside world perceives changes in different ways depending if the person was right or left handed. For instance the very first patient to undergo this surgery was a WWII veteran who lost his ability to speak for almost 30 days.

It was found with corpus callosum severed patients that items placed in the left hand that they could demonstrate its use but could not say its name. Yet the same object then placed in the right resulted in the patient saying its name and verbally describing the use. When asked to demonstrate how to use it usually resulted in either confusion or the patient reacting unsure and not overly confident if they did use it properly. For instance a comb resulted in the left hand combing the hair with no verbal name or description, and in the right hand a proper name and description but rubbing it on the face rather than sliding it through the hair.

Also if a word was held visible only to the left eye, the patient could not read it, yet held only visible to the right and the patient could.

It was discovered that the right cerebral hemisphere was blessed with abstract geometric logic while the left cerebral hemisphere was fluent with words. Each side became specialists in various areas including memory. Because each side could communicate with the other through the corpus callosum, each became woefully deficient in certain skills. For instance the right brain was extremely word-lazy. Why worry about learning and memorizing letters, words, and written structure logic when it could just “ask” the left-brain who knew these things, the same with the left-brain when it came to physical and artistic logic.

It was discovered that over a period of time, six months to a year, both sections of brain learned the concepts that the other section was a specialists in. For instance the right-brain learned to read. It was possible for a corpus callosum severed patient to read two separate books at the same time and retain knowledge of what was read.

They also discovered that patients could become ambidextrous, or write with either hand. Now when the person was originally right handed, the writing was done with wrist and hand. The writing done with the left was performed with more shoulder and arm flexing than wrist and hand motion. Thus they discovered that the left-brain, which controls the right side of the body, is strong in logic and academics or reading, writing, and mathematics. This leaves the right brain more artistic and imitative.

It was also found that by isolating the left senses from the right, two very different people would appear. Isolating the vision and sound of each side, researchers would communicate first with the right, then the left. It was discovered that right after surgery a war would occur between the newly separate minds over who got to talk. The victor was usually the dominant mind. Or if they were right handed, the left-brain would talk, and vise-a-versa.

But like very close twins, many aspects would be the same, whereas others very different. One side was shy. One side was fluent in social events while the other more dreamy or artistic. While one side was extremely emotional the other was stoical.

In memory the person also displayed unusual patterns. Shortly after the separation, tests or discussions done to one side (the other isolated from these) were not found to be in the memory of the other side. Yet months later, the other side began to recall these memories though strict control these tests were never revealed to the other brain.

Sorry for the long narrative, but I wanted an understanding before I say this. Our personalities are actually a mix. By fully severing the corpus callosum two of these personas are isolated, allowing the meeker one to fully surface. Though over a period of time the separated mind “learns” how to communicate, though limited, through other means, perhaps through the more primitive mind situated near the hub of the brain and spinal cord.

Anyway, what we have are mental clones. Two slightly different people trapped in the body of someone else. When the corpus callosum was severed, in a sense that person died and two others were born. Thus two clones of the original person came into being, each slightly different that the original whole.

There you go, my mind bender. What are your thoughts on this one?

The Don.

I wonder if its becuase its a test for brain death… he could have been testing if the brain responds to stimuli or something… But then, I know nothing about brains, aside from what I learned in Human Biol four years ago, and that was largely this: brains look boring. Useful things to have though, I highly recommend one

I want to know the thought process that lead from “this patient is paralyzed but is unaware of his paralysis” to “I’m going to squirt cold water in his ear”… it’s not exactly the first thing that pops into your head.

By the way, the article and comments are incredible.
You wonder if maybe you really are crazy and won’t know it until the voices tell you?

Now *that* is damn interesting (not to say the article isn’t, because it totally very much is). Does anyone know anything more about that? Never mind that I’ve missed the party, having surfed over here from a year later…Anyone?

Did you know you could sustain retrograde blindness? That is, be rendered blind, and lose all memory of sight, so that your memories of your childhood would also be blind? Imagine suddenly never knowing you could ever see.

Brains = crazyness.

They could communicate with one half of the brain at a time by covering one eye and showing written messages. One half of the brain could do things like recognize “it’s cool, round, red” but not name it. The other half could name it “apple” but not describe it.

Anyway, they would tell one half of the brain (the right, I think, it was a very long time ago) to, for example, get up and walk around. Then they’d ask the other half of the brain (left if I recall correctly) why it was walking around and it ALWAYS came up with an answer such as “I wanted to get a soda” or “I felt like stretching my legs.

After I read this, I was continuously amused by my friends who always had reasons for everything they did, even though the reasons were obviously fabricated.