W.J. was a warm, affable man, and the two hemispheres of his brain seemed to be working fine together, although they were no longer in direct communi… - Michael S. Gazzaniga
" "W.J. was a warm, affable man, and the two hemispheres of his brain seemed to be working fine together, although they were no longer in direct communication. One of them talked, one of them didn’t. Given the way the brain is wired, that meant the left, talking brain viewed the visual world to the right of a fixated point and the right, non-talking hemisphere viewed all the visual information to the left of the same point. Given this surgical state, I wondered: If I flashed a light over to the right, would W.J. say he saw it? Light should go to the left hemisphere, and the left hemisphere had speech; it should be easy. It was, and W.J. easily declared he saw it. A bit later, I flashed the same light over to the left side of space and waited to see if he would say anything. He didn’t. I pressed him and asked if he had seen anything, and he firmly said “No.” Was he blind on that side? Or was that simple spot of light no longer communicated to the half brain that talked? Did the seemingly mute right brain know it had viewed a light? Was it conscious? What was going on?
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About Michael S. Gazzaniga
Michael S. Gazzaniga (born December 12, 1939) is an American neuroscientist, author and professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Native Name:
Michael Steven Gazzaniga
Alternative Names:
Gazzaniga, M.S.
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M. S. Gazzaniga
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Michael S Gazzaniga
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Gazzaniga, Michael S.
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Additional quotes by Michael S. Gazzaniga
When communication between the hemispheres is lost, each is unaware of the other’s knowledge and each functions independently based on the information it receives. Both sides of the brain try to complete the task independently, resulting in the tug-of-war. By this simple task, the illusion of a unified consciousness is exposed. Clearly, if consciousness arose from a single location, then a split-brain patient would be unable to have two simultaneous experiences!
I will argue that consciousness is not a thing. “Consciousness” is the word we use to describe the subjective feeling of a number of instincts and/or memories playing out in time in an organism. That is why “consciousness” is a proxy word for how a complex living organism operates. And, to understand how complex organisms work, we need to know how brains’ parts are organized to deliver conscious experience as we know it.
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