Split Brain Syndrome
- Sanya Samant
- May 30, 2019
- 4 min read
Like most people when I first heard the phrase "Split Brain", I thought the person was talking about a split personality and had gotten the name wrong. Little did I know that it was a whole different concept. Split Brain literally meant Split Brain, when the brain is split into two. It is a surgery performed on patients who suffer from severe Epileptic Seizures. To understand what a split brain is we first need to understand what Epileptic Seizures are.
What are Epileptic Seizures?
Epilepsy is a group of neurological diseases characterized by epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures are episodes that can vary from brief and nearly undetectable to long periods of vigorous shaking. These episodes can result in physical injuries including occasionally broken bones. The cause of most cases of epilepsy is unknown, although some people develop epilepsy as the result of brain injuries, stroke, brain tumors, infections of the brain, and birth defects.
What exactly is a Split Brain?
Split-brain is a lay term to describe the result when the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is severed to some degree. It is an association of symptoms produced by disruption of or interference with the connection between the hemispheres of the brain. The surgical operation to produce this condition results from transection of the corpus callosum , and is usually a last resort to treat refractory epilepsy. After a split - brain surgery, the two hemispheres do not exchange information as efficiently as before. This impairment can lead to The Split Brain Syndrome a condition where the separation of the two hemispheres affects behaviour and agency. Michael Gazzaniga and Rojer W Sperry, were the first to study split brain syndrome. They found out that in patients with the syndrome, the right hemisphere which controls the left foot and hand, acts independently of the left hemisphere and the ability to make rational decisions. While the left speaks much better than the right side, the right half takes care of the space perception tasks and music like maps and words and tunes to your no. 1 song. The right hemisphere can only say rudimentary words and phrases but contributes emotional context with language. For example, you would be able to read the word hat but not picture it. I have read about a woman who suffered from the split brain syndrome. After she had gotten a part of her corpus collosum sergically removed she was more or less the same apart from a few instances. In the mornings after her children had gone to school, she would go for a bath but before doing so she would go to her closet to remover her outfit for the day. Using her left hand she would pick out something she liked, or that her brain liked, when out of the blue, without any control by her, her right hand would remove something else. No matter how hard she tried, she would not be able to put it back in the cupboard. One day she went for a few tests to the doctors to see how her brain was now functioning after the partial removal of her corpus collosum. They made her do a small test. On a screen in front of her they would show an image for a split second and she would have to say what she sees. The left eye sees images clearly which are on our right, while the right eye sees images clearly which are on out left. So, on the screen a series of images were portrayed on the right and side, such as a shoe, a stick, a tree etc. She guessed each one of these right. Then the next image portrayed for half a second was on the left hand side of the screen. When she was asked to tell the doctor what she saw, she was confused. The picture that was shown to her was a woman on a telephone. She said that there was a woman but when asked what the woman was doing she blanked out. Finally, she took a random guess and said that the woman was skipping. The doctor then told her to right down what she saw with her left hand, she wrote it and gave it to the doctor. The doctor asked her what she had written and she said skipping, but actually she had written telephone.
How this happened.
When the image was portrayed on the left hand side of the screen, her right brain got a more detailed image of the picture than the left brain. The right brain knew the girl was talking in the telephone but it was unable to send the image to the left hemisphere. Left hemisphere is responsible for understanding and processing images to words, since the connections between the two hemispheres was severed the left did not receive the full picture and thus she was unable to say it. The right controls left hand movements so when she was asked to write down what she thought the lady was doing she wrote telephone as that was the image the right hemisphere had seen. The reason she said skipping is the left hemisphere thought of all the things girls did and thus she said it. Or maybe the left hemisphere got a glimpse of the telephone line and thus assumed it to be a skipping rope. In the same way if the screen had a division she would not be able to see the image portrayed on the left half as she would be unable to process it.
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