Sperry And Gazzaniga Summary

In the article read Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga conducted studies of the human brain and its two separate hemispheres. Patients with severe epilepsy had undergone procedures that severed the two hemispheres of the brain at the corpus callosum. After surgeons separated the two hemispheres, Sperry and Gazzaniga began testing the hemispheres. Sperry and Gazzaniga wanted to further examine how the two halves worked separately, thus exploring visual, tactile, and both visual and tactile. To test visual abilities researchers used lights and began flashing them. When patients were asked to identify which side they had seen, they had only seen the left row of lights. It first appeared that the right side of the brain had no sight. With one more attempt to test the right side, the lights were flashed again and when the patient was asked to …show more content…
The patients were then asked to describe or name the object. When the object was placed in the left hand the patient could not describe or name the object. This is due to the fact that you left hemisphere controls the right and vice versa. When the object was placed in the right hand the patient could verbalize the name and descri ption of the object, further supporting the conclusion that the left hemisphere is responsible for speech. When patients were asked to match objects to other various objects presented the patients did so efficiently. Researcher conducted other studies to test both visual and tactile together. The study concluded that both hemispheres could analyze objects. When a patient was presented the word heart, He read the one word as two separate words. The two beginning letters HE was sent to right visual field, the end letters ART were sent to the left field. This drew the researchers to the conclusion that the right hemisphere could comprehend language but in a way that differed from the left and also in a non-verbal