LAB REPORT

Laboratory Report: The Split Brain Revisited



Abstract

The Split Brain Revisited is a science-based overview of brain asymmetry, which introduces us to the contemporary research on the behaviors of the split brain. It focuses on the key issues that result from the hemispheric activities of the right and left parts of the brain. We will focus on the left-handedness of the brain which means that when an object is placed on the right side of it, the left brain promptly responds to recognize it through its sensors. We will also discuss certain neuro-imaging techniques that tell us about the levels of consciousness and its underlining theoretical concepts. We will assess the latest discoveries concerning cerebral hemispheric organization and its relationship to mental function in order to reach certain findings for our laboratory report.

Lab Report: The Split Brain Revisited

Split-brain operation or commissurotomy is the disconnection of the two cerebral hemispheres by a section of the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers that connects the two cerebral hemispheres. This intervention was done (and just practiced) in cases of severe epilepsy unresponsive to drug treatment and prevent the uncontrolled electrical activity in one hemisphere, during the seizure, which affects the other. It curiously decreased also the frequency of seizures too.

In this lab report, we discovered what happens when during an epilepsy the nerves corpus callosum, dividing the two halves of the brain, are served with electric treatments. This phenomenon was studied using a systematic study structure through an organized experiment conducted in the laboratory. We will analyse the main findings of our experiment related to the difference in the nervous system and its implications to the visual aspects of the patient. Split brain research has been the centre of concern and inquisitiveness of the domain of neuroscience since a long time now. We came to know that not only the different parts of the brain are divided but also they communicate in different ways when separated. Numerous techniques have been used to study how the brain processes speech. One of the oldest is lesion analysis, where functional neuroanatomy is inferred from patients with localized brain damage (lesions, e.g., from stroke or trauma) who exhibit a particular language deficit or aphasia. Until the middle part of the 20th century, much of our understanding of speech and the brain came from lesions. With the widespread use of microelectrode recordings in nonhuman animals, researchers began to characterize moment-by-moment representations of sounds. Microelectrode recordings, though, are surgically invasive and cannot be performed in healthy people. Most early studies of real-time speech perception in humans instead used electro-encephalography (EEG), which measures electrical fields from neural activity with electrodes resting on the scalp. Numerous characteristic deviations or oscillations in electrical waves have been identified in speech and language processing. However, early EEG studies did not use many electrodes on the scalp and could not identify where in the brain this speech processing occurs.

Split brain Surgery

A brain in which there is no connection between the left and right ...