Split Brain DATA RESULTS TWO THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND: 1. The right hemisphere of the brain interprets information presented in the left visual ﬁeld, and vice versa. 2. The right hemisphere of the brain controls the left hand, and vice versa. A SUMMARY OF THE RESULTS: A split-brain patient can have some diﬃculty recognizing or naming objects, especially when this information is presented in the left visual ﬁeld—and thus processed by the right hemisphere. Although the right hemisphere seems to have enough language capability to comprehend simple words of concrete objects, it does not have the phonological (speech) capabilities to allow the word of the object to be spoken. Thus, while the right hemisphere may be able to “read” the word and therefore direct the left hand to pick up the correct object, the patient isn’t able to state the name of the object. When a word is presented to the right visual ﬁeld, the patient’s left hemisphere can easily process the word (since most of our language abilities reside in the left hemisphere), direct the patient to say the word aloud, and cause the right hand to ﬁnd the object behind the screens. However, when there is a mismatch between the visual ﬁeld that the word is presented to and the hand the patient is asked to use, the patient is unable to grasp the hidden object behind the screens, even if the word was processed in the left hemisphere, and therefore easily recognized by the patient. This result has fascinated scientists and the public alike for decades since it was ﬁrst discovered by Gazzaniga and his colleagues in the 1960s.

Split Brain

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