Who's In Charge?
The name of the book by Michael Gazzaniga, professor of psychology at the University of California, that questions everything we know to be true. Gazzaniga is one of the pioneers who demonstrated that control is an illusion through a series of experimental studies in the field of perceptual neuroscience. Experiments and inferences in this field can reshape our spiritual views as well as directing science. First, let's get to know the anatomical structure of our brain, then let's take a look at these experiments together.
Our brain consists of two lobes, left and right;
The left lobe controls the muscles of the right part of the body, it is logical, detailed and rigid.
The right lobe controls the left part of the body and is our fluid and intuitive side.
We have been questioning the consistency of elements such as will, freedom and control with a truth discovered in the recent past; The right and left lobes of our brain actually work completely independently of each other.
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Our story begins with Roger Wolcott Sperry's unusual idea in the mid-1900s that would later bring him a Nobel Prize. He recommends cutting off communication between the two lobes of the brain as a treatment for epilepsy. Thus, even if the electrical currents between the brain cells, which cause epileptic seizures, started in one lobe, they would not be able to jump to the other and would be prevented from turning into a storm. Since the distribution of tasks between the right and left lobes of the brain was clearly and precisely separated from each other, no problems were foreseen in terms of maintaining the vital functions of the patient.
It was a miracle for patients with epilepsy who could not be treated with medication, some of whom agreed to be volunteer subjects of this surgery, the results of which are not known with certainty.
Thus, in these patients, the band called Corpus Callosum, which is formed by the combination of more than 200 million nerve fibers that provides communication between the two lobes, was cut.
It sounded too good to be true.
It soon turned out to be so.
As expected in the first stage, there was no significant effect on the vital and social activities of the patients. But as the controls continued, some strange behavioral patterns were noticed. It seemed that the right and left lobes of the brain, which were separated from each other, began to act as independent brains. For example, the left hand intervened in an outfit chosen by the right hand and chose another outfit.
In 1960, the crux of our story began when Sperry included Gazzaniga, a young and excited doctoral student at Caltech. Gazzaniga wanted to take a closer look at this anomaly, four out of ten patients who underwent surgery agreed to be subjects, and our heroes embarked on the Split Brain Experiments, the results of which are still studied with interest in neuroscience and psychology today. Who would have thought that one simple question asked of patients would make us question everything we thought we knew while solving the mystery of the case.
“Why did you do that?”
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In the first of the experiments, cards with the names of various objects were shown on them so that only one eye of the patients could read them. When shown to the right eye, the left lobe, subjects could easily name the objects.
When the cards were shown to the left eye, that is, to the right lobe, the patients stated that they did not see any text.
Could they have lost the ability to read in their left eye after the operation?
In order to test, they were asked to select the object they saw on the card from a box containing many objects, using their left hand.
patients chose exactly the object whose name was written on the card.
To explain the reasons for the interesting situation here, step by step;
1- Images seen with the left eye are transferred to the right lobe of the brain.
2- In most people, the speech center is located in the left lobe of the brain.
3- The channel providing the communication between the two lobes of our subject was cut.
In other words, although the right lobe actually succeeds in seeing, reading and perceiving, the subject cannot pronounce what he reads because he cannot transfer this information to the left side.
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Sperry, deneyi bir sonraki adıma taşımaya karar verdi.
Deneylerin ikinci aşamasında sandalyede oturmakta olan hastaların sol gözlerine üzerinde "yürü" yazan bir kart gösterildi. Hastalar yine okumakta ve komutları yerine getirmekte hiç zorlanmayarak kalkıp yürümeye başladılar.
And the critical question came; why did you get up?
None of them said "because you showed me a card that says walk".
Even more interestingly, after a second pause
They gave answers such as to go to the toilet, to get water, because I was bored of sitting.
It is the left hemisphere of our brain that is responsible for establishing a cause-effect relationship between events. The one who reads and understands the walk command shown to the left eye is the right. That's why our subjects, who had no communication between the two hemispheres of their brains, could not explain the true reason for their behavior. However, according to them, the reasons they stated were quite correct. Because truth and reality may not always be the same.
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In the final stage, an experiment was designed in which both sides of the brain were included. A chicken's beak was shown in the left lobe, and a photo of a snowy winter day in the right lobe. They were then asked to simultaneously select the relevant ones from a series of photographs of both hands. The right hand, associated with the left lobe, chose a picture of a chicken, and the left hand, associated with the right lobe, a snow shovel.
And it was asked, why did you choose these two photos?
While the left lobe had no difficulty in making the connection, answering "because you showed me a chicken beak", the subject paused for a moment seeing the picture of a snow shovel in his left hand. His right brain would not be able to establish the cause-effect relationship. However, the subject's hesitation before answering did not last a second;
– Because you need a shovel to clean up chicken droppings!
Was there a limit to what we unconsciously and consciously did to appear consistent?
The most interesting part of all these experiments was that the patients did not hesitate in the slightest in their answers, even though the real motivation behind their behavior was completely different.
How could they be so sure?
Evolution has taught us to be sure of ourselves throughout existence. Our ancestors, who were exposed to various vital threats for centuries, had to make vital decisions in a very short time. The necessity of choosing one of the three escape, hide, fight by analyzing the situations quickly, programmed the mind to make inferences in the light of other things he knew, even on the subjects he did not know.
Throughout history, people's discovery of this weakness of the mind has had enormous effects. Those who filled the gaps that the human brain could not solve for their own benefit imposed fear-based control mechanisms and teachings on others. Fearful of not knowing, man renounced his will and freedom just for the sake of knowing.
Isn't this experiment alone enough to question everything we are 100% sure of from the beginning?
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It is at this point that the next generation, Professor VC, who is currently still an educator at California Tech. We would like to end with Ramachandran. Because Ramachandran knew that the right brain could not "speak", he presented his subjects with a mechanism. The patients were shown answer cards that they could choose with their left hand after various questions they saw with their left eyes.
Ramachandran asked the right brain: Do you believe in God?
Left hand replied: Yes
Ramachandran asked the left brain: Do you believe in God?
Right hand replied: No
At the end of the video, if you want to hear it from his own mouth, Ramachandran asked the theologians the following question:
– And what will happen when this person dies? Will the right brain be sent to heaven and the left brain to hell?
We don't know the answer yet. If you want to hear it from his own mouth, at the end of the video, Ramachandran asked the theologians the following question:
– And what will happen when this person dies? Will the right brain be sent to heaven and the left brain to hell?
We don't know the answer yet.
It's hard not to be amazed by the tremendous work our brains are doing in the background, which we do unconsciously. Man has evolved from the level of inventing fire to warm himself to a state that can develop flawless devices to question his own existence. And it has continued on its way, evolving 100 times faster than before in the last 5000 years.
There are some critical facts that one should not forget in this process.
Nature works in a tremendous balance and harmony. Disrupting the balance in any equation leads to polarization, and polarization leads to destruction. And, especially in recent years, people use the left brain lobe, which functions logically, analytically and operationally, much more actively, which causes them to perceive life from a narrow window and make decisions in one direction.
This state of being out of balance, which begins in the human brain, leads to the effort to dominate nature and to destruction. The masculine energy with which the left brain is associated is becoming more and more toxic.
It is possible to stabilize the activity of the lobes of the brain. You can find the effects of meditation in this article and you can watch the right / left channels balancing work in this video.
References:
Wright, Robert. The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.
Schjoedt, U. (2009). The Religious Brain: A General Introduction to the Experimental Neuroscience of Religion, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 21(3), 310-339. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/157006809X460347
"The Split Brain Experiments" . Nobel Media. Retrieved 27 April 2014.
Gazzaniga, Michael (1967). "The Split Brain in Man". Scientific American. 217 (2): 24–29. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0867-24. Retrieved 28 April 2014.
Mooshagian, Eric (2008). "Anatomy of the Corpus Callosum reveals its Function".Journal of Neuroscience. 28 (7): 1535–1536. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5426-07.2008.
Tramo MJ, Baynes K, Fendrich R, Mangun GR, Phelps EA, Reuter- Lorenz PA, Gazzaniga MS (1995): Hemispheric specialization and interhemispheric integration: Insights from experiments with commissurotomy patients. In: Epilepsy and the Corpus Callosum 2. Reeves AG, Roberts DW, eds. New York: Plenum, pp. 263-295
Funnell M. G.; Colvin M. K.; Gazzaniga M. S. (2007). "The calculating hemispheres: Studies of a split-brain patient. [Article]". Neuropsychologia. 45 (10): 2378–2386.doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.01.017.
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