Psy 300 Week 2 Individual Assignment

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Resides Solely in the Left Hemisphere of the Brain Transcript Speakers: Michael Mosley, Female Speaker 1, Female Speaker 2 Michael Mosley After they had recovered from their operation, they appeared to be normal. Which was amazing, given the extent to which the whole architecture of their brains had been altered. (Footage of a boy at a chalkboard) This 12-year-old boy is doing some pretty impressive subdivision and his spelling isn't bad, either. But in psychology circles, they became legends. And that is because these patients would in time reveal something that, to me, is truly astonishing. The two halves of our brain each contain a sort of separate consciousness. Each hemisphere is capable of its own independent action. This sensational finding came about by accident. A group of scientists in California recognized the experimental potential of the split brain patients. Because their brains had been separated, it was a unique opportunity to find out if the different hemispheres had different abilities and if so, what? To do this, they had to devise ingenious experiments that would test each hemisphere in isolation. Neurobiologist Roger Sperry set to work. The results were bizarre for the patients and for the researchers. I remember seeing this footage nearly 30 years ago and being completely blown away. Sperry's experiments made use of the fact that the right hand is controlled by the left hemisphere and vice versa. Female Speaker 1 Put your left hand through the screen. Okay, I'm going to put a number in your hand now and what I want you to do is signal the answer. So here's the first number. Michael Mosley So far, no great surprises. But then the researcher asked her to name out loud the number she'd got in her hand. Female Speaker 1 Can you tell me what that number was? Female Speaker 2 Four? Female Speaker 1 Okay,
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