Mota Boy
03-14-2008, 12:03 PM
And no, it's not this (http://gawker.com/5003867/the-scientologists-glitzy-birthday-party-for-tom-cruise).
Split-brain patients.
For those of y'all that don't want to bother with the link, split-brain patients are people that have had their brains cut in half. The nerve links between the two hemispheres are severed, separating the two eyeballs, along with the language from the motor functions of the body. Regarding the eyeballs, there's one really goddamn interesting part - they don't just lose sight in one eye, they literally lose half their sight. The are only able to see the left or right half of things. If you ask them to draw someone's face, they'll only draw one half. If you ask them to draw a clock, it'll turn out something like this:
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~gawron/intro/aphasia_lec_files/clock.gif
It's totally crazy.
But it gets even more interesting (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo).
Yes, that's right. What you saw on that video was a man who's language function could only see one thing, while his physical function could only see another. If the language function saw it, it would say it; if the physical function saw it, it would draw it. And neither would know why the other was doing it.
So man, that's pretty goddamn wild, right? Our bodies processing and remembering information and carrying out actions without our conscious knowledge. Oh, but wait. It gets even better.
So. You can show things to the acting part of the body without the speaking part seeing it, or vice versa, right? Well now, what if rather than just giving the physical part a word and a pen, how about giving it a command? Yes, you can do that. You can tell the physical side of a split-brain patient to leave the room, or to laugh, and the speaking part of the brain has no fucking clue why it did that. Now, here's what's really, really interesting, and slightly horrifying: when you ask the speaking part of the brain why it carried out those actions, it will give you a false explanation, such as "I went out to get a Coke" or "I'm just laughing because you guys carry out these experiments each month - what a way to make a living!" So our speaking, conscious part of our brains will come up with an after-the-fact, fantasy explanation for an action that was entirely controlled by the unconsciouses, physical parts of our bodies, all the while, apparently, completely believing it himself or herself.
It causes one to wonder just how conscious we actually are - how much of our conscious thought consists of retrograde justifications for unconscious actions.
Split-brain patients.
For those of y'all that don't want to bother with the link, split-brain patients are people that have had their brains cut in half. The nerve links between the two hemispheres are severed, separating the two eyeballs, along with the language from the motor functions of the body. Regarding the eyeballs, there's one really goddamn interesting part - they don't just lose sight in one eye, they literally lose half their sight. The are only able to see the left or right half of things. If you ask them to draw someone's face, they'll only draw one half. If you ask them to draw a clock, it'll turn out something like this:
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~gawron/intro/aphasia_lec_files/clock.gif
It's totally crazy.
But it gets even more interesting (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo).
Yes, that's right. What you saw on that video was a man who's language function could only see one thing, while his physical function could only see another. If the language function saw it, it would say it; if the physical function saw it, it would draw it. And neither would know why the other was doing it.
So man, that's pretty goddamn wild, right? Our bodies processing and remembering information and carrying out actions without our conscious knowledge. Oh, but wait. It gets even better.
So. You can show things to the acting part of the body without the speaking part seeing it, or vice versa, right? Well now, what if rather than just giving the physical part a word and a pen, how about giving it a command? Yes, you can do that. You can tell the physical side of a split-brain patient to leave the room, or to laugh, and the speaking part of the brain has no fucking clue why it did that. Now, here's what's really, really interesting, and slightly horrifying: when you ask the speaking part of the brain why it carried out those actions, it will give you a false explanation, such as "I went out to get a Coke" or "I'm just laughing because you guys carry out these experiments each month - what a way to make a living!" So our speaking, conscious part of our brains will come up with an after-the-fact, fantasy explanation for an action that was entirely controlled by the unconsciouses, physical parts of our bodies, all the while, apparently, completely believing it himself or herself.
It causes one to wonder just how conscious we actually are - how much of our conscious thought consists of retrograde justifications for unconscious actions.