As in any layered system, however, the system can become jeopardized if a core component that transfers information from one layer to another malfunc… - Michael S. Gazzaniga

Just before I left for Long Island and my new life, I got another call, this one from Dr. Ernest Sachs, up at Dartmouth Medical School. He was head of neurology at the time, and he invited me up to give a lecture. I was thrilled. I was to play the role of professor at my old alma mater! It was especially sweet because the very same medical school had rejected my application eleven years earlier, even though I was an undergraduate at Dartmouth and my brother was one of their stellar graduates. It is events like this in one’s past that fall off the story line. What if I had been accepted and gone? There would have been no split-brain work for me. How would that whole story have been different? I believe that things just happen in life, and pretty much after the fact, we make up a story to make it all seem rational. We all like simple stories that suggest a causal chain to life’s events. Yet randomness is ever present.

Our brains renew themselves throughout life to an extent previously thought not possible.

So now we know that modular systems have many advantages, but how do they do it? How do thousands of independent localized modules work together to coordinate our thoughts and behaviors and, ultimately, produce our conscious experience?