Hemispheric lateralisation and split-brain research

• What is hemispheric lateralisation?

  The two hemispheres of the brain are functionally different and certain mental processes and behaviours are mainly controlled by one hemisphere rather than another
• What is a function that is localised and lateralised?

  • Vision
  • The visual area is in the left and right occipital lobe - the LH and RH respectively
  • Motor and somatosensory areas are in both hemispheres
  • Motor area: contralateral wiring (cross-wired) RH controls movement on left side etc
• Left hemisphere

  • Language: LH - B’s area: left frontal lobe, W’s area: left temporal lobe - language is lateralised
  • LH: analyser
• Vision


  • contralateral and ipsilateral
  • eyes receive light from LVF and RVF
  • LVF of both eyes is connected to the RH and RVF of both eyes is connected to the LH - helps compare different perspectives from each eye
  • There is a similar arrangement for auditory input to the auditory area - helps us locate the source o
• What is split-brain research?

  A surgical procedure that serves the corpus callosum (connecting the 2 brain hemispheres)
• why is split-brain research done?

  To reduce the severity of epileptic seizures by preventing electrical activity from spreading between hemispheres
• what is the goal of split-brain research?

  To understand how the two hemispheres function independently when they can’t communicate
• What was the aim of Sperry‘s research?

  To investigate how the separated hemispheres process information particularly speech and vision
• Who were the participants in Sperry’s research?

  • 11ps who underwent split-brain operation due to epilepsy
• Sperry‘s procedure: Visual tasks

  Sperry showed images or words to either the LVF or RVF of these ps, knowing that the information would be processed by the opposite hemisphere (LVF processed by the RH, and vice versa)