hemispheric lateralisation and split brain research
Cards (6)
- Sperry and Gazzanigaaim- examine effect to which two hemispheres are specialised for certain functionsmethod-image projected to patients left visual field(processed by right hemisphere) or the right visual field (which is processed by left hemisphere). when info presented to one hemisphere in a split brain patient, info is not transferred to other hemisphere as corpus callosum is cut
- sperry and gazzaniga methodIn the ‘describe what you see’ task, a picture was presented to either the left or right visual field and the participant had to simply describe what they saw.In the ‘tactile test’ an object was placed in the patient’s left or right hand and they had to either describe what they felt, or select a similar object from a series of alternate objects.Finally, in the ‘drawing task’ participants were presented with a picture in either their left or right visual field, and they had to simply draw what they saw
- describe what u see- left hemispheretactile - left hemispheredrawing - right hemispheresperrys findings
- limitation-split brain research is a rare procedure-very small p's-and p's surgery might have affected their brain even more making them very very diff to general population-lacks generalisability
- limitation-patients brains may function differently due to abnormal seizure activity- seizure activity is a confounding variable-recent studies havent totally supported sperry results- some shown some language tasks are processed in right hemisphere as well as left-If recent split-brain research has found different results to the original studies, this tells us that the research has not been replicated.
- strengthSperry’s divided field method was ingenious and very well-controlled. So ingenious that he was awarded a Nobel prize in 1981.He used all sorts of ways to ensure only one hemisphere was receiving the stimuli at a time. This is a methodological strength as the information gathered is both valid and reliable.