SPLIT - BRAIN SYNDROME 

                            Like most people when i first heard the phrase "Split Brain" , i thought the person was talking about a split personality and had gotten the name wrong . Little did i know that it was a whole different concept. Split Brain literally meant Split Brain, when the brain is split into two.  It is a surgery performed on patients who suffer from severe Epileptic Seizures. To understand what a split brain is we first need to understand what Epileptic Seizures are. 

                                   

                                     

                                            

                                       What are  Epileptic Seizures? 

               

                       Epilepsy is a group of neurological diseases characterized by epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures are episodes that can vary from brief and nearly undetectable to long periods of vigorous shaking. These episodes can result in physical injuries including occasionally broken bones. 

The cause of most cases of epilepsy is unknown, although some people develop epilepsy as the result of brain injuries,stroke , brain tumors, infections of the brain, and birth defects. 

                                       What exactly is a Split Brain ?

              Split-brain is a lay term to describe the result when the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is severed to some degree. It is an association of symptoms produced by disruption of or interference with the connection between the hemispheres of the brain. The surgical operation to produce this condition results from transection of the corpus callosum , and is usually a last resort to treat refractory epilepsy.

             
 After a split - brain surgery, the two hemispheres do not exchange information as efficiently as before. This impairment can lead to The Split Brain Syndrome , a condition where the separation of the two hemispheres affects behaviour and agency. 
Michael Gazzaniga  and Rojer W Sperry , were the first to study split brain syndrome . They found out that in patients with the syndrome the right hemisphere . which controls the left foot and hand , acts independently of the left hemisphere and the ability to make rational decisions. While the left speaks much better than the right side , the right half takes care of the space perception tasks and music like maps and words and tunes to your no. 1 song . The right hemisphere can only say rudimentary words and phrases but contributes emotional context with language . For example you would be able to read the word hat but not picture it. 

        

                    I have read about a women who suffered from the split brain syndrome. After she had a part of her corpus collosum surgically removed ,she was more or less the same person apart from a few instances. In the mornings after her children had gone to school she would go for a bath . Before doing so she would go to her closet to remover her outfit for the day. Using her left hand she would pick out something  her brain liked . But unfortunately, without any control over herself , her right hand would remove something else from the closet. No matter how hard she tried , she would not be able to put it back in the cupboard. 

In a few days she went to the doctor's for her follow up on the functioning  of her brain after the partial removal of her corpus collosum. They made her do a test. On a screen in front of her they would show an image for a split second and she would have to say what she sees. The left eye sees images clearly which are on our right , while the right eye sees images clearly which are on our left..A series of images were displayed on the right side of the screen. Things like a shoe ,a stick ,a tree etc. She guessed each one of these right. 

The very image portrayed for half a second was on the left hand side of the screen. When she was asked to tell the doctor what she saw , she was confused. The picture that was shown to her was a women holding a telephone. She said that there was a women but when asked what the women was doing she blanked out. Finally she took a random guess and said that the women was skipping. The doctor then told her to right down what she saw with her left hand , she wrote it and gave it to the doctor. The doctor asked her what she had written and she said skipping , but actually she had written a women holding a telephone. 
                                   
How this happened....
When the image was portrayed on the left hand side of the screen , her right brain got a more detailed image of the picture than the left brain. The right brain knew the girl was holding a telephone.But, but it was unable to send the image to the left hemisphere. 
The left hemisphere is responsible for understanding and processing images to words since the connections between the two were severed(cut off), .The left brain did not receive the full picture and thus she was unable to say it. The right brain controls the left hand movements . Hence when she was asked to write down what she thought the lady was doing ,she write what she actually was doing.As  that's the image the right hemisphere had seen. The reason she said skipping is the left hemisphere thought of all the things girls did and thus she said so. Or maybe the left hemisphere got a glimpse of the telephone line and thus assumed it to be a skipping rope. 
            



            In the same way if the screen had a division she would not be able to see the image portrayed on the left half as she would be unable to process it .