Two Minds, One Brain

Some people with a split-brain experience problems of the two hemispheres competing for attention. They seem to have two different minds. The left is responsible for details, language, and logical reasoning. The right is responsible for spatial processing, emotions and face recognition, and music. Since what we see in the right eye is processed in the left hemisphere the patient isn't able to recognize what they saw on the left. But when asked to draw with their left hand, which is processed by the right, they can draw what is in the field of view but don’t know where it came from. If really fascinating how the person can’t state what is going on but it is still processed into the brain so the patient can retrieve it and does unconsciously know what was seen in the left visual field. Many studies have been conducted on these individuals and some have found that a split brain person’s “two minds” compete at times. One lady described taking 3 hours to get dressed just because the left side of her brain was competing on what to wear with the right. The reason they compete is because the two hemispheres see differently. They grasp the world around them differently. Without the two sides being able to communicate with each other through the corpus callosum, they can’t decide on one thing. Learning about these people and their brain functions has really got me more interested in the brain. I always knew of the differences the hemispheres had but reading about this helped me grasp more of our brain’s capacity. It is so amazing how our brain is able to register things we didn't even notice. Thanks right half, for giving the big picture and capturing my surrounding, and thanks left half, for giving me the ability to put it all together and keep it organized.