hemispheric lateralisation + split brain research

• hemispheric lateralisation defintion

  refers to the fact that some mental processes in the brain are mainly specialised to either the left of right hemisphere
• what is split brain research?

  Research that studies individuals who have had the two sides of the brain disconnected through the severance of the corpus callosum
• what is the bundle of nerve fibres that connects the left and right hemispheres called?

  corpus callosum
• who conducted studies into split brain research

  Sperry + Gazzangia
• outline one research procedure used to investigate split-brain individuals (3 marks)

  - patient is blindfolded on one eye --> as the patient has no corpus callous, info presented to one side of the brain has no way of travelling to the other

  - an image or word is flashed to the uncovered eye

  - the patient is asked to recall what they saw
• what were the findings from Sperry and Gazzangia's study?

  . when a word or image was presented to the right visual field (processed by the left hemisphere), participants could name it verbally

  . when the same word/image was shown to the left visual field (processed by the right hemisphere), participants could not name it but could draw or point to it.

  there are a number of differences between the 2 hemispheres which suggests that connectivity between the different regions is as important as the operation of the different parts