Lateralisation, Split Brain Patients, Plasticity

Question 1

What is Lateralisation?

Answer 1

The idea that the two halves of the brain are functionally different and certain processes or behaviours are controlled by one hemisphere.

Question 2

What was the aim of Sperry (1968)’s study?

Answer 2

To investigate what functions of the brain are lateralised.

Question 3

What was the procedure of Sperry’s study?

Answer 3

Compared split-brain patients to others with no hemisphere separation. Different activities were tried with the patients including touch of objects and visual presentation of stimuli to see how the different sides perform on tasks.

Question 4

What were the findings of Sperry’s study?

Answer 4

LEFT visual field: they could not describe it (they often reported that there was nothing there).

RIGHT visual field: they could easily describe the picture shown to their right visual field.