What happens if you separate the left hemisphere of the brain from the right? As a violation of connections in the brain, determines the signs of old age.

Your brain is two brains. Two hemispheres, each half makes you you. Each gets half of the field of vision and control of half of the body.

The right controls the left half and the left controls the right. Both your brains are connected by a plexus nerve fibers, but this connection can be divided, and once epilepsy was treated this way.

After the operation, the people remained the same, although their brains were divided in half. In addition, some patients reported that when choosing clothes, left and right right hand might not agree with each other. In fact, they often disagreed, which upset the patients.

What is going on? To find out, remember that the right hemisphere sees and controls one half, while left hemisphere controls and sees the other.

But only the left brain can speak, because the center of speech is located there. The right brain without it is dumb. In a normal brain, this is not important, since the hemispheres communicate with each other. But with a split brain, this is not possible, and if you show the right hemisphere a word and ask the question "What did you see?", you will get the answer "Nothing."

Because the left - speaking - hemisphere did not see anything. At the same time, the right hemisphere will select with its hand the thing hidden from the left hemisphere. And it's very creepy.

Ask: "Why are you holding this thing?" and the left brain will come up with a plausible, but false reason. "I've always wanted to learn how to collect them." The left brain isn't lying, it's just doing what it always does: making up a story to explain its own actions, which calls into question the notion of free will.

Making up reasons for your actions is just what the left brain does. This happens with normal healthy people all the time, and when you think about it, you know you do the same.

Let's get back to the experiments. Give the right hemisphere an object, ask the patient "What's in your hand?" and he won't be able to answer. And if you ask both hemispheres to draw something, the divided brain can draw two different drawings at the same time, with each hand, which would be a challenge for the undivided brain.

These experiments on split-brain patients are seriously troubling because they essentially point in the direction of a separate mute intelligence, something that lives in your skull. You can even ask a split brain a question and get two different answers.

And if your brain is divided, who is "you" in this situation? At first glance, it's easy to think of the talking part of the brain as a person, but something else is listening and answering questions. And while the right hemisphere can't speak, it recognizes faces, which the left can't. If this is you, then you will not be able to recognize your family and friends.

The division of the hemispheres reveals two consciousnesses in one head, and the speaking consciousness does not know that there is someone else inside. The left hemisphere can describe the situation in which it is, but despite this, it will still be surprised at the actions of the right hemisphere and try to explain them.

The question that needs to be answered is why, after separation, the right hemisphere does not go crazy, but starts playing along, answering questions, and listening to stupid stories of the left hemisphere about what is happening.

One possible answer is that the separation does not turn the right hemisphere into a separate intellect/consciousness/personality. Rather, it has always been her. Perhaps, in ordinary people, the right hemisphere develops as a companion that simply has no choice.

As equal partners at first, but with the advent of speech, which the right hemisphere cannot participate in and which becomes an important part of life, it recedes into mute coordination with the left hemisphere. At this very moment, in your head, two of you are watching this video: one is going through a "brain blowout" while the other is rolling his eyes at the obviousness of it all.

In split brains, the right hemisphere does not go crazy because nothing has really changed for it. You may not agree, and right now you are thinking about why this is impossible. Which is what we expect from a left-brain speaker.

By setting aside assumptions, split-brain patients show that there is a separate thing in the mind that can hear and understand and respond when given the right conditions.

Our time is the era of amazing discoveries: deciphering the genome, cloning, organ transplantation. But back in the 1930s, Academician I. P. Pavlov noticed that the course of natural science for the first time noticeably stopped in front of the highest riddle of nature - the thinking brain. Cyberneticians have called the brain a black box. We know what information enters the brain, and we can judge how it affects a person's behavior, thoughts and feelings. But what is going on inside - in this box? ..

The brain has two hemispheres: left and right. But they took shape at different times: for millions of years, a person lived only with the right hemisphere, and then another one appeared, which complicated the picture. It turned out that these two hemispheres are completely autonomous. They "speak" different languages and, as a rule, do not hear each other.

University of California scientist Robert Ornstein proved:
if the "weaker" hemisphere is stimulated and put to work
together with a more "strong" (leading), efficiency
human activity increases by 5-10 times.

Left hemisphere: tasks

The left hemisphere is "preoccupied" primarily with processing, analysis, and deduction; convergent ("converging" - from general to particular) thinking; facts, figures; end result; structure, logic and sequence; mathematical models; expediency; reduction of tasks to working particulars; science and technology; applying a sequential approach - approaching step by step; verbal (verbal), literal, concrete language; developing well-defined plans; in order.

Right hemisphere: tasks

Right hemisphere more "interested" in abstract topics; artistic expression; constructive tasks; ideas, emotions and feelings; creative crafts; divergent ("divergent" - from the particular to the general), global thinking; process, not result; using experience; knowledge through images; perception; prayer, meditation, mysticism; remembering faces; spontaneity; visual; work with symbols, fantasies, dreams, metaphors and images; work with the opposite and the unknown.

Both hemispheres of the brain are connected by a small
site - corpus callosum. Through it, the hemispheres "communicate" between
itself, which largely determines the coordinated and consistent
thinking, imagination and human behavior. If this area
the brain is damaged, a person has
mental and behavioral disorders.

If the left hemisphere dominates

Someone who solves problems based on the left hemisphere:

• determines the goals of the decision to be made;
• classifies goals according to their importance;
• determines alternative courses of action, evaluates them against goals and selects the alternative with the best result;
• defines and evaluates possible consequences alternatives;
• makes decisions with careful monitoring and monitoring of possible negative consequences.

If the right hemisphere dominates

Someone who solves problems based on the right hemisphere:

• softens rational thought with emotional-intuitive preferences;
• uses various methods"bringing" into the understanding of extraconscious material;
• avoids censorship of ideas during their "maturation";
• treats divergent, even conflicting ideas with respect rather than skepticism and defensiveness;
• tries not to neglect intuition;
• tests any rational way of solving a problem to see if it feels intuitively good in the development process and in the final solution;
• trying to remain constantly aware of himself.

Understand each other

As a result, it turns out that the two hemispheres live in different realities and express themselves in completely different ways. For example, a lecturer builds certain logical connections, strings concepts. But not everyone in the audience understands him, and here he names a certain metaphor and sees that some of the listeners are grabbing a pen to write down an image that they understand.

Some people find it difficult to think, reason, comprehend logical connections. They talk about their problems and when you manage to understand the reason for their condition, they are sincerely surprised: “Why did this never occur to me?” Other people are bad with emotions. They do not understand why feelings are needed, and often even despise mental anguish.

In one of the sciences that comprehend the secret of the brain, -
neuropsychology - it is customary to talk about the dominance of one of
hemispheres of the brain and the so-called interhemispheric
asymmetries. This asymmetry is normal. It is believed that men
predominant - dominant - is the left hemisphere,
and in women - the right hemisphere of the brain.

Perfect balance?

So what then can be considered a psychological norm? Someone, perhaps, will answer right away: balanced, balanced development of both hemispheres. But how can this be achieved and what will human culture look like in this case? It's hard to imagine. Perhaps there will be no outstanding discoveries and creations in it, but something qualitatively new will arise? This encourages further reflection on the mysteries of the brain.

An intern at Lantern recorded lectures by science journalist Alexei Paevsky and Anna Khoruzha, founder of the Neuronovosti.ru portal, about the capabilities of the human brain.

In December, the Contact business space hosted two popular science lectures on the structure of the human brain. Science journalist with ten years of experience Alexey Paevsky and resident doctor of the Scientific Center of Neurology, founder of the Neuronovosti.ru portal Anna Khoruzhaya gave two lectures on the possibilities of the brain and spoke about unique cases in medicine. Below is a transcript of some of the things they talked about.

“The possibilities of a thing that everyone has, but which not everyone uses”

Sometimes events occur that baffle doctors and scientists. And each such case becomes an occasion for many years of investigation, research, hypotheses. Anatoly Bugorsky fell under a working proton splitting accelerator - a beam of frantic power passed through him, after which they do not survive, but he remained alive.

Other interesting cases are known. Terry Wallis was an ordinary American gopnik. This 22-year-old idiot just got married, had a daughter, and one evening he went with his friend ... What to do? Of course, drive cars. And he did it in a state of severe alcohol intoxication. How does it usually end? A car falling off a bridge. The driver died, and Terry received a head injury incompatible with life, but survived. True, he plunged into a deep coma. And suddenly, in 2003, 19 years after he lay in a state that never comes out, the guy suddenly opened his eyes and spoke.

The first thing he did was to ask for a Coca-Cola and ask what kind of old woman had left the room. It was his mother. He tried to walk, but he never succeeded. The studies that have been done have shown amazing thing: at the time of injury most neural connections died, and in 19 years the brain grew new ones. In other words, regenerated itself.

Photo vk.com/public151114819

The famous American Phineas Gage worked as a tunnel blaster in 1845. Once, as usual, he planted explosives near the tunnel, but something went wrong, and he was hit by an explosive wave. There, by chance, lay a metal crowbar that entered his skull from the cheekbone, passed behind the eye, piercing it, struck the brain and exited the top of the head. Interestingly, Phineas didn't even lose consciousness. He demanded a doctor, and when he arrived, the patient with the words: "Doctor, there is a lot of work for you" almost spat out part of the brain. The doctor pulled out a crowbar and treated the wound. Within a year, Phineas recovered, but became abrupt and irritable. He even had to leave the US. Ten years later, he still died, but the cause was not an injury. As it turned out when studying his skull, the crowbar severed the connections between the emotional cortex and the frontal lobe. This is an example of an anti-lobotomy.

In the world they live perfectly unique people. For example, a girl with one hemisphere of the brain - a beautiful Frenchwoman and clever Michelle Mac - IQ is over a hundred, speaks two languages ​​since childhood, and everything is fine with her. Once, for other reasons, she underwent a tomography, and the doctor fainted, because the girl did not have one hemisphere - it did not develop. However, she did not experience any health or mental problems. Just one hemisphere took over the function of two. Such people have one “but” - they do not have stereo vision: we see a three-dimensional picture, but they see a flat one.

Is it possible to live with ten percent of the brain or no cerebellum at all?

Another unique case: there are 86 billion neurons in our brain. Approximately 70 billion are located in the cerebellum - the part of the brain that is responsible for the coordination of movements. If the cerebellum is removed, the person will lose balance and be unable to walk. In China, a 24-year-old girl from a village came for an MRI scan. She is married and walks absolutely normally. Of the pathologies, only developmental delay in childhood, but now she is a fully socialized girl, although she does not have a cerebellum and never had one. Not a single connection in the brain goes to the cerebellum, the brain can live without most neurons and manages to make up for the coordination of movement without it.

Photo vk.com/public151114819

But it turns out that life is possible even with ten percent of the brain. The most interesting case: a petty official comes with a complaint of pain in his leg. They decided he had a stroke and needed an MRI. It turned out that the man had lost 90 percent of his brain, although we know that he was originally. In his youth, they put "noise" on him, and it was the electric waves that destroyed the brain. But the man is completely without deviations. This is a manifestation of extreme plasticity - our brain can change and take on the functions of dead connections.

Myths about hemispheres and memory

Anna Khoruzhaya dispelled the myth that the right hemisphere is responsible for creativity, while the left hemisphere is responsible for analytical operations. In fact, both hemispheres of the brain work in the same way, just one of them takes a greater part in certain activities. It has to do with certain brain structures. The right hemisphere more easily integrates the general, and the left hemisphere specializes in something narrow. Previously, it was assumed that the features of the structure of the skull can be said about the features of a person's character. Now this myth has been dispelled, but it was the first step towards studying the functions of the brain.

Photo vk.com/public151114819

The scientist Penfield discovered that there are zones in our cortex that are completely responsible for our perception, for all our sensations and movements. He assigned parts of the cerebral cortex to different functions of parts of the body. Based on this theory, scientists tried to find the place where the memory was located. The experimental mouse was removed sections of the bark, but she still found a way out of the maze and remembered the way. Then they assumed that the brain is integral and memory is located in all parts of the brain, but this opinion was refuted. Some areas of the brain are still responsible for memory, and now scientists are struggling to find out which areas of the brain affect creative consciousness and the flight of thought, and how such a small organ allows us to be such complex, highly organized people, because both of your hemispheres work for everything. one hundred percent.

Anna Khoruzhaya also shared a very useful advice: “When you have a difficult task ahead of you: write an article or compose a poem, but you can’t do it, get distracted. It's all about concentration. Go take a walk. And then you'll be fine."

The next popular science lecture in Belgorod will be held on January 6th. Science journalist and blogger Asya Kazantseva.