hemispheric lateralisation and split brain Flashcards
1
Q
hemispheric lateralisation
A
- two sides of the brain are not completely alike and are functionally different because the brain is lateralised so they are specialised to different sides
- The left hemisphere is dominant for language and speech whereas the right hemisphere is dominant for creativity and facial recognition
2
Q
Sperry- split brain patients
A
- in the 1940s patients with severe epilepsy would have the. corpus callosum cut partly or entirely, this is a bundle of nerve fibres which allows the left and right hemisphere to communicate but when it is cut they can no longer communicate
- split brain patients would have an image projected to their right visual field and then a different image to the left visual field
- participants could only describe what they saw when shown to the left hemisphere not to the right and this was true when you held items, a patient touching an item with a left hand could not describe it as information goes to the somatosensory cortex which is in the right hemisphere
3
Q
strength (2)
A
- contributed to psychological research in brain, concluded left hemisphere responsible for analytical tasks, given more insight into the brain and our understanding of it
- procedures closely controlled, ensured images flashed for only fractions of a second so the other eye did not have enough time to look, strengthens internal validity
4
Q
limitation
A
small sample, issues with generalisability and their brains may have been affected by their epileptic seizures
5
Q
evaluation of hemispheric lateralisation
A
+ conducted in lab and has used methods such as FMRI etc, so allows us to be objective, increasing internal validity
+ Sperry’s brain research
- gender differences, researcher found that women have proportionally larger Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas than men, resulting in a women’s greater use of language, so male and female brains are different and operate in a different manner
