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Split brain does not lead to split consciousness

A new research study contradicts the established view that so-called split-brain patients have a split consciousness. Instead, the researchers behind the study, led by UvA psychologist Yair Pinto, have found strong evidence showing that despite being characterised by little to no communication between the right and left brain hemispheres, split brain does not cause two independent conscious perceivers in one brain. Their results are published in the latest edition of the journal Brain. 

Split brain is a lay term to describe the result of a corpus callosotomy, a surgical procedure first performed in the 1940s to alleviate severe epilepsy among patients. During this procedure, the corpus callosum, a bundle of neural fibres connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres, is severed to prevent the spread of epileptic activity between the two brain halves. While mostly successful in relieving epilepsy, the procedure also virtually eliminates all communication between the cerebral hemispheres, thereby resulting in a ‘split brain’.

This condition was made famous by the work of Nobel laureate Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga. In their canonical work, Sperry and Gazzaniga discovered that split-brain patients can only respond to stimuli in the right visual field with their right hand and vice versa. This was taken as evidence that severing the corpus callosum causes each hemisphere to gain its own consciousness.

Divided perception

For their study, Pinto and his fellow researchers conducted a series of tests on two patients who had undergone a full callosotomy. In one of the tests, the patients were placed in front of a screen and shown various objects displayed in several locations. The patients were then asked to confirm whether an object appeared and to indicate its location. In another test, they had to correctly name the object they had seen, a notorious difficulty among spit-brain patients. ‘Our main aim was to determine whether the patients performed better when responding to the left visual field with their left hand instead of their right hand and vice versa’, says Pinto, assistant professor of Cognitive Psychology. ‘This question was based on the textbook notion of two independent conscious agents: one experiencing the left visual field and controlling the left hand, and one experiencing the right visual field and controlling the right hand.’

To the researchers’ surprise, the patients were able to respond to stimuli throughout the entire visual field with all the response types: left hand, right hand and verbally. Pinto: ‘The patients could accurately indicate whether an object was present in the left visual field and pinpoint its location, even when they responded with the right hand or verbally. This despite the fact that their cerebral hemispheres can hardly communicate with each other and do so at perhaps 1 bit per second, which is less than a normal conversation. I was so surprised that I decide repeat the experiments several more times with all types of control.’

(Image caption: A depiction of the traditional view of the split brain syndrome (top) versus what the researchers actually found in two split-brain patients across a wide variety of tasks (bottom). Credit: Yair Pinto)

Undivided consciousness

According to Pinto, the results present clear evidence for unity of consciousness in split-brain patients. ‘The established view of split-brain patients implies that physical connections transmitting massive amounts of information are indispensable for unified consciousness, i.e. one conscious agent in one brain. Our findings, however, reveal that although the two hemispheres are completely insulated from each other, the brain as a whole is still able to produce only one conscious agent. This directly contradicts current orthodoxy and highlights the complexity of unified consciousness.’

In the coming period, Pinto plans to conduct research on more split-brain patients to see whether his findings can be replicated. ‘These patients, who are rapidly decreasing in numbers, are our only way to find out what happens when large subsystems in the brain no longer communicate with each other. This phenomenon raises important questions that cannot be investigated in healthy adults because we have no technique to isolate large subsystems in healthy brains.’

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Brain patterns underlying mothers’ responses to infant cries

Infant cries activate specific brain regions related to movement and speech, according to a National Institutes of Health study of mothers in 11 countries. The findings, led by researchers at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), identify behaviors and underlying brain activities that are consistent among mothers from different cultures. Understanding these reactions may help in identifying and treating caregivers at risk for child maltreatment and other problematic behaviors.

The study team conducted a series of behavioral and brain imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In a group of 684 new mothers in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, South Korea and the United States, researchers observed and recorded one hour of interaction between the mothers and their 5-month-old babies at home. The team analyzed whether mothers responded to their baby’s cries by showing affection, distracting, nurturing (like feeding or diapering), picking up and holding, or talking. Regardless of which country they came from, mothers were likely to pick up and hold or talk to their crying infant.

Through fMRI studies of other groups of women, the team found that infant cries activated similar brain regions in new and experienced mothers: the supplementary motor area, which is associated with the intention to move and speak; the inferior frontal regions, which are involved in the production of speech; and the superior temporal regions that are linked to sound processing.

Overall, the findings suggest that mothers’ responses to infant cries are hard-wired and generalizable across cultures. The study also builds upon earlier work showing that women’s and men’s brains respond differently to infant cries.

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Why You Think You Are Not Good Enough AND How to Fix it

“If I asked you to name all the things you love, how long would it take to name yourself.” – Anon

There is no shortage of reasons why we sometimes feel like we flat out aren’t good enough. Maybe it’s low grades in school, or we think we are too thin, or too fat, or too young. Maybe our partner makes us feel inadequate, or our parents seem to believe we can’t do anything right.

Sometimes we do it to ourselves. We compare our home, or clothes, or cars to where someone else lives, or to what they wear, or to what they drive. If we believe their things are better than ours, then we tell ourselves we are less of a person.

Society doesn’t help us believe that we are unique, or that being unique is seriously “good enough.” There is constant pressure to be the best team, the best student, the best assistant, the best employee. We compare ourselves to models in magazines and hold ourselves to a certain standard of perfection that is as unrealistic as it is attainable.

It isn’t a Feeling. It’s a Thought.

When you don’t feel “good enough” it’s often because you are telling yourself you’re stupid, or ugly, or incapable. The thoughts you use to describe yourself make you unhappy. These thoughts make you feel depressed and worthless. According to Ali Miller, MFT, this is an important distinction. She believes that…

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Never give up on someone with a mental illness. When “I” is replaced by “we”, illness becomes wellness.

Shannon L. Alder (via psych2go)