Summary: The Parallel And Distributed Brain

1058 Words5 Pages
Chapter Two: The Parallel and Distributed Brain Josh Patterson 12/1/13 The author starts this chapter with the analogy of the scene from the movie the Men in Black where it the human brain is opened only to find a small alien inside with controls that lead one to believe that indeed there is an inner operator inside of us that controls our every actions and our behaviors. It was first believed that there we were born hard wired and ready to go. It was believed that mortality and intelligence were innate, and like the internet, us as humans had no boss. It was believed that we were hardwired with millions of choices and decisions that the brain allowed us to make choices dependent upon the situation. According to this, scientists believed…show more content…
Research was first done on monkeys when their corpus callosum was cut. It was discovered that skills did not transfer from each side of the brain after the surgery was performed. Lashley was one of the first scientists to study the effects of split brain research. He studied twenty-six different patients who underwent surgery to sever the connection to each hemisphere of the brain in hopes to cure epilepsy. It was discovered that each hemisphere was responsible for different functions. It was discovered that the right hemisphere was superior at visual spatial reasoning: right hemisphere can write not draw, recognize facial attributes, while the left brain is responsible for intellectual…show more content…
Research notes that the two hemispheres are not created equal. Research states that left side of the brain is responsible for literal understanding of information and drawing of inferences while the right side of the brain is responsible for emotional information and recognition of items. It was suggested that the consciousness was everywhere in the brain, not just on one side or the other. Eccles had proposed his theory that only the left side of the brain was responsible for consciousness. Continued research with split brain patients proved that it is the visual cortex that is responsible for assembling pictures from the visual world. Additional studies proposed that there was no alien in control of the brain so to speak, but that it was the brains job to make sure that everything was working all at once. The author gives the example of driving a car, making sure to watch one’s speed, distance between other vehicles, shifting, and still being able to sing all at once. This information proves that indeed the brain is a complex machine and that even though we know the parts of the brain we can still not predict exactly how and why things work. It is the human quest to understand the brain and how, why it works. The question remains is it human free will or is something governing our choices and behaviors. The author best describes this question with the use of Google. There are sellers

More about Summary: The Parallel And Distributed Brain

Open Document