The Split Brain in Man The human brain is actually two brains, each capable of advanced mental functions. When the cerebrum is divided surgically, it is as if the cranium contained two separate spheres of consciousness the brain of the higher animals, ‘duding man, is « double organ, ‘consisting of right and left hemi spheres connected by an isthmus of nerve tissue called the oorpus callosum. Some 15 years ago Ronald I. Myors and R, W, Sperry, then at the University of Chicago, made a suxprising discovery: When this conneetion between the two halves of the cerebrum was cut, each hemisphere functioned independently as if it were a complete brain. The phenom- fonon was first investigated in a cat in which not only the brain but also the ‘optic chiasm, the exossover of the optic nerves, was divided, so that visual in- formation from the left cye was dis. patched only to the left brain and infor- ‘mation from the sight eye only to the right brain. Working on a problem with cone eye, the animal eould respond nor rally and learn to perform a task; when ‘that eye was covered and the same prob- Jem was presented to the other eye, the animal evinced mo recognition of the problem and had to lear it again from inning with the other half of the ‘The finding introduced ‘questions in the study of bra nisms. Was the corpus eallosum respon- sible for integration of the operations of the two cerebral hemispheres in the in- tact brain? Did it serve to keep cach hemisphere informed about what was going on in the other? To put the ques ton another way, would cutting the cor pps callosum literally resule én the right hhand not knowing what the left was do- ing? To what extent were the two half- Drains actually independent when they were separated? Conld they have seps~ rate thoughts, even separate emotions? Such questions have beem pursued by Sperry and his co-workers in a wide- ranging series of animal studies at the California Institute of Technology over a acl S. Cazzanign the past decade [see “The Great Cere- bral’ Commissire,” by R. W. Sperry; Scinwniete Aveenican, January, 1964), Recently these questions have been ine vestigated inhuman patients who under- went the brainspliting operation for redical reasons, The demonstration in experimental animals that sectioning of the corpus callosum did not soxisly fmnpair mental faculties had encouraged surgeons to retort to this operation for people afficted with uncontillabe epi- lepsy. The hope was to confine a seizure toone hemisphere. The operation proved to be semarkably successful; curiously there is an almost total elimination ofall attack, including unilateral ones. Itis as 5 the intat callosum had serve in these patients to facilitate seizure activity. his stick is a brief survey of investi- gations Sperry and Ihave eared out st Cal Tech over the past fve years with some of these patients. The operations swore performed by B. J. Vogel and J. FE. Bogen of the California College of Med cine. Our studies date back to 1961, ‘when the fist patient, a 48-year-old war veteran, underwent the operation: ent- ting of the corpus callosum and other commissure stmiotwres connecting the two halves of the cerebral cortex [see illustration on page 25]. As of today 10 patients have had the operation, end we have examined four thoroughly over a Jong period with many tet. From the beginning one of the most striking observations was that the opera tion produced no noticeable change in the patients” temperament, personality for genoral intelligence. In the fist case the patient could not speak for 30 days after the operation, but he then recoy- tered his speech, More typical was the fhird case: on awaking from the surgery the patient quipped that he had a “spit ting headache,” and in his stil drowsy state he was able to repeat the tongue twister "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” Close observation, however, soon re vealed some changes in the patients ev. exyday behavior. For example, it cond be seen that in moving about and ro sponding to sensory stizmsl the pations favored the right side ofthe body, which fs controlled by the dominant lft half af the brain, Fora considerable period aftr the operation the left side of the body rarely showed spontaneous activity, and the patient generally did not respond to stimulation of tht side: when he Drushed against something with his lft side he did not notice that he had dove 0, and when an objeet was placed in his Ioft hand he generally denied its pres More specific test identified the main features of the bseeted-brain syndrome. One of these tests exumined responses to visual stimulation, While the patient fixed his gaze on a central point on Iboard, spots of light were flashed (fora tenth of a second) in a row across the board that spanned both the left and the right half of his visual feld. The patient ‘was asked to tll what he ad seen. Hach patient reported that lights had been Hashed in the right half of the visul feel, When lights were flashed only in the left half of the fel, however, the pa tionts generally denied having seen any Tights. Since the right side of the visual field is normally projected to the et Inenispere of the brain and the lef field to the right hemisphere, one might have congluded that in these patients with divided brains the right hemisphere wa fn effect bind, We Found, boseever, tat this was not the ease when the patiens were dizected to point tothe lights that hhad flashed insted of giving a verbal re port. With this manual response they were able to indicate when lights hadFerien leur pret oes _ pere’s perception verbally was due to © Jyain are located in the left hemisphere. foe tas eae ana it, for example, to the same object in a ~~ varied collection of things, We soon real- Saccgnuna deco tmevenets te ese Sir pe perpetrate We come sow to the main question fon which we centered our studies, Damely how the separation ofthe hemi. spheres affects the mental eapacties of the hinman brain, Fee these paychologi cal tests we used two different devices. One was visual: a picture or wiiten in- formation was flashed (for a tenth of a second) in either the right of the left Visual field, so that the information was transmitted only tothe eft orto the right brain hemisphere [see ilustratton “on Page 27]. The other type of text was SPEECH coRPUS ‘CALLOSUM VISUAL INPUT to bi in was limited 10 one hemisphere by presenting infor ration only in one viewal field, The risht and leit feds of view are projected, via the optic chia, to the left and right hemispheres of the brain respersively. If person fixes his gaze on a point, therafore, information to the left of the point goce only to the right hemisphere and information tothe right of the point goes to the left hemisphere. Still ia the left visual field cannot be described by a splicbrain patient because of the diseonnee- tion botwoen the right hemisphere and the speech center, which fe in the left hemisphere, Po‘CORPUS CALLOSUM oy wee ‘TWO HEMISPHERES of the human brain are divided by ANTERIOR ‘COMMISSURE 1ee0ns to contre epilep- Le selzures, In thie top view of the brain the right hemiephore ie retracted and the eorpat callosum and ther commiseures, or connectors, that are generally eut are shown in color. tactile: an object was placed out of view in the patient’s right or left hand, again for the purpose of conveying the infor- ration to just one hemispherethe hemi- sphere on the side opposite the hend. ‘When the information (visual or tac- tile) was presented to the dominant left hemisphere, the patients were able to deal with and describe it quite normally, Doth orally and! in writing, For example, when @ picture of a spoon was shown fn the right visual feld or a spoon was ‘laced in the right hand, all the patients readily identified and described it, They were able to read out written messages ‘and to pexform problems in caleulation that were presented to the left hemi sphere. In contrast, when the same informs. ton was presented to the right he sphere, it failed to elicit such spoken oF ‘written responses. A picture transmitted to the right hemisphere ovoked either a haphazard guess or no verbal response at all. Similarly, a pencil placed in the left hand (behind a seveen that eut off vision) ‘might be called a can opener or a ciga~ rete lighter, ot the patient might not 2% even attempt to describe it. The verbal guesses presumably eame not from the right hemisphere but from the left, which had no perception of the object Dut might attempt to identify it from in- direct clues. 2 this impotence of the ight hemt- sphere mean that its surgical separa- tion from the left had reduced its mental overs to an imbecilic level? The ear- ier tests ofits nonverbal capacities sug- gested that this was almost certainly not 50. Indeed, when we switched to ask- ing for nonverbal ansivers to the vis- ual and tactile information presented in ‘our new psychological tests, the right hemisphere in several patients showed considerable capacity for accurate per- formance. For example, when a picture of « spoon was presented to the right hhemisphere, the patients were able to focl around with the left hand among a varied group of objects (screened from sight) and select a spoon as a match for ‘he picture.” Furthermore, when they ‘were shown a picture of a cigarette they succeeded int selecting an ashtray, from 4 group of 10 objects that did not nchude a cigarette, as the article most closely related to the picture. Oddly enough, however, even after their correct te. sponse, and while they were holding the spoon of the ashtay in thee leltfand, they were unable to name ar describe the object or the picture. Evidently the ll emisone wae ‘completly dh vorced, in perception and knowled Eom berght. . Other tests showed that the right Demisphove did posses a certain amount of language comprehension. For exan ple, when the word “pencil” was fished to the right hemisphere, the. patients wero able to piek ont a pencil from a group of unsoen objects with the let Irand. And when « patient beld an object Jn the left hand (out of view), although he could not say sts name or dosetibe it, he was later able to point to 4 eard ‘on which the name of the object was vwnittan, In one particularly interesting test the ‘word “heart” was flashed across the cen ter of the visual field, with the “he” par tion tothe left of the center anc “srt to the vight. Asked to tell what the word vwas, the patients would say they had seen “art™=the portion projected to the left brain hemisphere (which is respon sible for speech). Curiously when, after heart” hud been Hashed in the’ same way, the patients were asked to point swith the left hand to one of two caads~ “act” or “het identify the word they had seen, they invariably pointed to he” ‘The experiment showed cleely that both hemispheres had simults neously observed the portions of the ‘word available to them and that inthis particular ease the right hemisphexe, ‘when it had had the opportunity to e press itself, had prevailed over the left. Beeanse an atiitary input to one esr goes to both sides of the brain, we oom ducted tests for the comprehension of words presented andibly to the right hemisphere not by tying to limit the original input but by Timiting the ability to answer to the right hemisphere. Thi ‘was done most easily by having a patient tse his left hand to retrieve, from a grab bag held out of view, an object named Dy the examiner. We found that the pe tients could easily rettieve such object as a watch, comb, maxble or coin. The object to be retrieved did not even have to be named; it might simply be de bed or alluded to. For example, the command “Retrieve the fruit monkeys like best” results inthe patients’ pulling font a bana from a grab bag, full of plastic featt; at the command *Sunkisti] ere esa lot of them” the patients retrieve "fo orange. We knew that touch informa- jon fom the left hand was going excl Grey to the right hemisphere because = fnaments lates, when tho patients wore = kod to name various pieces of frait © placed inthe left hand, they were unable fo core above a chance level. he upper init of inguistic bits in GV wat enisghre vases oe abject © tp subject. Ln ane ase there was ite or erilece fo language abilities in the ght benisphere, whereas in the other Bee the um and etn of De rites varied. The inst adept patint Showed some evidence of even being {bbe wo spell simple words by placing lato letters cna table with his lft and. The subject a told to spell a fro such a5 “ple” and the examiner then placed the thee appropiate leters, tne ata tne in a radon ede, tn is {et aod to be acanged on the table. Tho patient was abo to spall oven more fbetiet words such ab Chow” “what” fed “the” In another tot thre or four letters wee placed in a pe, gain putof viow, tobe Flt withthe lft hand. The Ieee avaiable in each al would spell anly one word, and the instructions to the wubject were “Spell a word"The pa etwas able to spell such words as ‘eip" and “love Yet after he had com. pled this ask, the patient sas wntblo torame the word he bad jas spelled! ‘The possibility that the sight hemi- sphere has not only some language but even some speech capabilities ean be ruled out, although at prsent there is no firm evidence for this. It would not be surprising to discover that the patients ate capable of afew simple exclamatory romarks, particularly when under emo- tional stress. The possibility also remains, ‘of couse, tha speech of some type could be trnined into the right hemisphere, ‘Tests aimed at this question, howaver, would have to be closely scrutinized and controlled. ‘The reason is that her, as ia many of the tests, “eross-cuing” from one hemic sphere to the other cov be held sespon- {io ey ost ngs Weld a case of such erass-catng during a series of tests of whether the sight hemisphere could respond verbally to simple red ot green stimuli At frst, after either a red ‘or a green light was flashed to the right hhomisphore the patient would guess the color at a chance level, as might be ex pected if the speech mechanism f solely represented in the left hemisphere. After a Tew trials, however, the score im proved whenever the examiner allowed second guess We soun caught on tothe strategy the patent used. Ifa red light was flashed ‘ind the patient by chance guessed red, hho would stick with that answer. Ifthe Aashed light was red and the patient by chance guessed green, he would frown, shake his head anid then say, “Oh no, T meant red.” What was happening was that the right hemisphere saw the red light and heard the left hemisphere make the guess “green.” Knowing that the answer was wrong, the right hemisphere precipitated frown and a shako of the head, which in tura cued in the left hemisphere to the fact that the answer \was wrong and that it had better carreot itselfl We have learned that this eross- ‘euing mechanism can become extremely refined. The reallzation that the neuro- logical patient has various strategies at his eomiand emphasizes how difficult it is to obtain a clear neurological deserip- tion of a human being with brain dam- 1s the language comprehension by the right hemisphere that the patients ex- hibited in these tests a normal capability of that hemisphere or was it aequited by learning after their operation, perhaps during ‘the course of the experiments themselves? The issue is difficult to de- cide, We must vemeriber that we are examining 2 half of the human brain, a system easily capable of learning from a single tral io atest. We do know that the right hemisphere is decidedly inferior to the left in its overall command of lan- guage. We have established, for in- stance, that althongh the right hemi sphere can respond to @ concrete noun sich as “pencil,” it canaat do as well with verbs; patients are unable to re- RESPONSE TO VISUAL STIMULUS te tested by flashing @ word ‘ra pieture of an objest om a translucent screen, checks the subject's gaze to be sue it je fixed on a dot that marks te center of the visual field. The exanainer may call we examiner fist 5b response—reading the flashed word, for smple—or for a not verbal one, such as picking up the object tat is name from among. things epread on the table. The objects are hidden ‘subjects view so that they can he identified enly by touch, aspond appropriately to simple printed Instructions, such as “smile” o “frown,” ‘when these words are flashed to the right, hemisphere, nor ean they point toe pic- ture that corresponds to a flashed verb, Some of one recent studies at the Uni versity of California at Santa Barbara also indicate that the right hemisphere has a very poorly developed grammar, it seems to be incapable of forming the plural of « given word, for example JP general, theo the extent of language present in the adult right hemisplere in ng way compares with that present in the left hemisphere or, for that matter, with the extent of language present in the ehild’s right hemisphere. Up to the age of four or 30, it would appear from « variety of neurological observations, the right hemisphere fs about as praftetent in handling language asthe left, Moreover, studies ofthe child's development of lan- YVISUAL-TACTILE ASSOCIATION is performed by a splibrain patient. A picture of guage, particularly with respect to gram. ae sovon i Rashed to tho right hemisphere; with the left hand he retrieves» spoon from be- mar atronghy suggest that the founda: 7 Find the eereen. The touch information from the left hand projees (color) mainly to the ions ‘of yramiminrea. ground. plan for i ight hemisphere, buta weak “ipsilateral” component gocs tothe left hemspher. Ths fs ty speakeane somehow ine ally not enough to eal him oy Cesng te Jf miphere) what he hn pckod wp. oS spel tae oly / fay reand bet Sa ges of wo Ee (arte ati tht ach hone about sal veloped with epee language Spec faction Wore ths ced ith TRetnterestngguaton of why tho ight hemisphere tf early age and sige OF cavlopment. poseser substan a language capacity whereas at a more woe sige poses 1 athe poor ex ty Ie deat Inde to conceive Be undelyng newsogel mecha nian ht wo st for the estas Inet of enpacy of high ede pit hemiphore on tempo) At Arend | — basis, The implication is that during ma- : HEF fiiia he pececeraea otc ce tailing hs eapcly anlfer ae Shutouts and dana Thug sda wed oe Mt Sey the dominant Tle ‘hee 2 Yet the right hemisphere is not in all repeat for or sebordna tthe Tee Tos have demeonstted tht ite (ch the lee sme spetied fe ton Avan example tes byw and by Tog we Ss that in thee pant thet had eapable of ananging Hela to mateo pcted design ad anna ee i tee Simeon L whereas the right hand, deprived of fs instructions from the right hemisphere, Could not perform ethos fo es VISUAL CONSTRUCTIONAL” tusks ae han ater by he ight homihar hie Tt sof Interest oot, however, hat was seen most clearly in the frst patient, who had poor ipsilateral control of his right although the patients (our first subject in MIEUQAtca MpLataass ie Mald“cpe the Eglo ska Ten ioe parce) ccd ot exacts it: EXAMPLE LEFT HAND RIGHT HAND i Ste 28= dexign when it appeared among five + their ight hand, the patients’ ina with the right hand, they were capable ne st stint the cone : pore are ded ld This showed that the dom “pant left hemisphere is capable of dis- aiminating between correct and incor | fect stimul. Since itis also true that the tients have no motor problems with te ity to perform these tasks must reflect « break- own of an integrative process some- fehore between the sensory system. and the motor system, "We found that in certain other mental processes the right hemisphere is on a par with the left, In particular ean ioe flependently generate an emotional reac- tion, In one of our experiments exploring the matter we would prosent a series of ordinary objects and then suddenly fash f picture oF «nude woraan, This evoked ‘an amused reaction regardless of whet tr the picture was presented to the left huanisphere or to the right. When the picture was Mashed to the left hesnt. sphere of a female potient, she laughed aud verbally identified the picture as 2 nde, When it was later presented to the right hemisphere, she sad in reply to a Sen at ts nothing Pa a ost immediately a sly smile spread over har face and she began to chuckle. Asked ‘what she was laughing, at, she said: “I don't know...nothing..ohthat fun machine.” Although the sight hemi sphere could not deserbe whut i bad seen, the sight nevertheless elicited. an canotional response like the one evaked from the lefthemisphere, Taken together, our studies seem to demonstrate conclusively that in a split brain situation we are really dealiog with two bring, each separately capable of ta fnctions of a high order, ‘This ples thatthe two brains should have tice as large» span of attention~that fe should Be able to handle twice as sch information—te normal. whole brain, We have not yot tested this pre cisely in human patients, bot ED. Young and T'have found that a split brain monkey ean indeed del with ene Iy twice as much infomation asa normal anal [se stration blew), We have $0 fardetenmined also that brinbisect patent ean cay out wo tasks as fastas« normal person can do one Jost how docs the conus ellasum of the intact brain combine and inte grate the perceptions and knowledge of the two cerebral hemispheres? This has been investigated recently by Giovanni Berlucchi, Giacomo Rizzolati and me at the Istituto di Fisiologia Umana in Pisa. ‘We made recordings of neural activity ia the posterior part of the callosum of the ‘eat with the hope of relating the 1. sponses of that structure to stimulation of the animal's visual felds. The kinds of re sponses recorded tumed out to be similar to those observed in the visual cortex of the eat, In other words, the results sug- gest that visoal pattern information can be transmitted through the callosum This finding miltates against the notion thet leaning and memory are trans: ferred geross the callosum, as has usnally been suggested. Instead, it Jooks as though in animals with an intact cat losum a copy of the visual world as seen fn one hemisphere is sent over to the other, with the result that both herni- spheres can learn together a discriminn- tion presented to just one hemisphere, In the split-brain animal this extension of the visual pathway is eut off this would explain rather simply why no learning proceeds in the visually isolated hemi sphere and why it has to learn the dis crimination from scratch, Curiously, however, the neural act ity in the callosum came only in response to stimull at the midline of the visual field. This finding raises dificult ques tions. How can it be reconciled with the well-established obsevvation that the left hemisphere of a normal person can give 2 runing description of all the visual in- formation presented throughout the en Ure half-Seld projected to the right hemi- sphere? For this reason alone one is wearily driven back to the eonchision that somewhere and somehow all or part of the calfosum transmits not only vis ual seene but also a complicated neural code of a higher order All the evidence indioates that separa- tion of ce hemispheres ereates two inde- pendent spheres of consciousness within 4 single cranium, that is to say, within a single organism, This conclusion is dis- tuxbing to some people whe view con- sciousness as an indivisible property of the human brain It seems premature to others, who insist that the capacities re vealed thus far for the right hemisphere are at the level of an antomaton. There Js, to be sure, hemispheric inequality in the present cases, but it may well be « characteristic of the individuals we have studied. It is entirely possible that if a human beoin were divided in a very young person, both hemispheres could fs a result separately and independently develop mental functions of « high order at the level attained only in the left hemisphere of normal individuals SPLIT-BRAIN MONKEYS can handle more visu ‘thon normal animals, When tl ‘The monkey mut thea start at vrelitand no others (2). With rmal monkeys get up to the (), eight filters: since the bottam bofore forgetting which panele wore lit monkeys complete the entire ta seconds. The monkeys look at the panels throngh ‘optic chiasm is cut in these aninuls, the fers allow each hemisphere to see the colored panels on ono side only. vith the panels oo