
The split brain: A tale of two halves (2012) - fmihaila
https://www.nature.com/news/the-split-brain-a-tale-of-two-halves-1.10213
======
beagle3
Recommended reading:

"The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind" by Julian
Jaynes

"Left in the dark" by Graham Gynn and Tony Wright (and apparently, 2nd hand
recommendation - "Return of the brain to eden" from the same authors)

Consider both science fiction rather than science; Jaynes is much more
scientific and grounded, though it is still incomplete. Wright is much looser
with facts and interpretations,

Still, both are thought provoking and worth reading in my opinion.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
Are you familiar with Dennett's take on it?

His paper, The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity -
[http://cogprints.org/266/1/selfctr.htm](http://cogprints.org/266/1/selfctr.htm)

~~~
beagle3
Was not familiar with it. Thanks, an excellent read.

------
vinceguidry
Split brain used to play a large role in how I understood personhood, until I
read that researchers could not later replicate the original results.

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2017/01/31/sp...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2017/01/31/split-
brain-consciousness/#.WpWCXBPwZTY)

~~~
KingMob
Former neuroscientist here. Umm, your link actually _criticizes_ the study
that didn't replicate the original findings in its final paragraph.

I'm inclined to believe their results were due to:

1) The corpus callosum is the dominant interhemispheric tract, but not the
_only_ one. Secondary tracts may have been recruited/enhanced to share info,
especially given that they've had decades since their surgery.

2) This fits with the progression of callosotomies, (and brain injuries in
general), where deficits are most acute right after surgery, and tend to
diminish over time. In fact the Nature article's example addresses this; the
patient only experienced split-brain behavior for about a year.

~~~
vinceguidry
Thanks for the clarification. I did not read the link I posted carefully, I
was searching from memory for the article that I'd thought I'd read. Obviously
I got the wrong one and there have been further developments.

The aspect of personhood that I'm referring to is the idea that we have two
people inside of us, that develop independently. That's a really weird one to
wrap my "brains" around. That the body works to recreate one personhood after
the callosum is split is pretty clear indication that there's one only 'self'
at play here. Both hemispheres cooperate to create it.

While I'm sure you can create some weird Frankenstein by cutting off all the
ways for the hemispheres to communicate, this is just doing damage to the
self, might as well just put a bullet in there and be done with it. A
collosotomy by itself doesn't destroy the self, the cohesive identity of the
body as having one mind.

~~~
slavik81
> The aspect of personhood that I'm referring to is the idea that we have two
> people inside of us, that develop independently.

The same experiment informed my understanding of consciousness in a different
way. It's not that there are two people inside you. Rather, your mind is
composed of many pieces that each individually only understand one apect of
the world. The corpus callosum is just an easy place to make a split. You
could subdivide further and see a similar effect on each subdivided part.

That's a thought experiment that could never be done for many reasons, but I
hold out some hope we might some day be able to verify it non-destructively.

