A BRAIN WITHOUT A CORPUS CALLOSUM

His study took significance when in the 1960’s; he was able to find out how the two hemispheres of the brain specialized. He did this by performing experiments on patients who had had the corpus callosum removed. This was a procedure performed to alleviate the symptoms of severe epilepsy. The results showed that each of the hemispheres had their own separate state of consciousness and viewed the world in a different way.

THE LEFT SIDE OF THE BRAIN AND THE SPEECH CENTRE

Sperry presented a patient with split-brain surgery two different words, which appeared on either side of the visual field. The patient was only able to verbalize the word that appeared on the right visual field. This was because it had been presented only to the left side of the brain where the speech centre is located. The right hemisphere cannot speak, so the only way to communicate the other word was to draw it or pick it out from a box of objects.

THE TWO HEMISPHERES OF THE BRAIN

Sperry’s discovery that the speech centre, logic and sequential thinking resided in the left brain, and that drawing ability, lateral thinking and holistic thinking resided in the right brain earned him a Nobel Prize in 1981.