Split brain and hemispheric lateralisation

• what is hemispheric lateralisation

  two halves of the brain are functionally different
• where are the brocas and wernickes area?

  left side of the brain
• what is the left hemisphere related to?

  speech and auditory information
• who and what did broca study?

  tan, a man with brain damage that resulted in him only being able to say the word tan but he could understand spoken language.

  he could not express himself verbally or in writing.
• what did damage to the brocas area lead to?

  expressive aphasia (brocas aphasia)
• what does damage to the wernickes area result in?

  receptive aphasia (wernickes aphasia)
• what did sperry study?

  people with a split or no corpus callasum.
• what cant happen if a corpus callosum is split

  communication cant happen between the hemispheres
• what is lateralisation?

  The specialization of brain functions in the left and right hemispheres.
• whats another term for lateralisation

  hemispheric asmmetry
• what is the left hemisphere dominant in?

  language
• what type of emotion is processed most in the left hemisphere?

  positive
• what type of emotion is processed most in the right hemisphere?

  negative
• what are 2 findings of sperrys research?

  1. disconnecting the hemispheres does not affect ordinary behaviour.
  2. the hemispheres have different abilities and functions.
• where is the right visual field processed?

  left hemisphere
• what did kim peek have?

  abilities in result of being born with brain damage including a total absence of the corpus callosum.
• what was kim peek like?

  socially awkward and had an IQ of 87 but he had exceptional memory\ skills
• how man books did kim peek have word for word recall over?

  12000
• what did post mortems show he had naturally developed

  bilateral language centres
• what is the strength of sperrys research?

  -highly controlled

  -used highly standardised procedures

  -scientific credibility
• what is a weakness of sperrys research?

  -used small sample

  -11ptts may not be able to generalise to everyone
• what is the defence point of having a small sample size?

  -not many patients could be studied due to nature of split brain procedure and the profound effects.
• whats a weakness of lateralisation?

  -changes with age

  -skaflarki et al found that language became more lateralised to the left hemisphere with imcreasing age in children but after 25, lateralisation decreased.
• what is a strength of split brain and hemispheric lateralisation

  -supporting evidence of tan

  -broca studied a patient called tan who was unable to speak apart from saying the word 'tan'

  -a post mortem revealed that tan had damage to his left frontal lobe.

  -this provides evidence that speech production is lateralised to the left hemisphere.