0:06

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

0:08

is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,

0:10

and it's Saturday. Time to go into the vault,

0:12

this time with a follow up from last Saturday's

0:14

Vault episode. This is going to be our

0:16

episode on the Split Brain Experiments,

0:19

Part two. If you listen last Saturday,

0:21

you know what's in store. So I guess let's

0:23

jump right in with every day. And from

0:25

both sides of my intelligence, the

0:27

moral and the intellectual, I've

0:30

else drew steadily near to that truth, by

0:32

whose partial discovery I have been

0:34

doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck

0:37

that man is not truly one, but

0:40

truly too.

0:45

Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind

0:47

from how Stuff Works dot Com.

0:55

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

0:57

is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and this

0:59

is going to be part two of our two part exploration

1:02

of hemisphereic collateralization and

1:04

especially the split brain experiments

1:07

of Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga

1:09

starting in the nineteen sixties. Now, if you

1:11

haven't heard the last episode, you should really

1:13

go check that out first. That's gonna lay all the groundwork

1:16

for what we're talking about today, right, and it will also

1:18

explain why we kicked off this episode

1:20

and the last episode with the reading from Robert

1:22

Louis Stevenson Strange Case of Dr

1:24

Jacqueline mr. Hyde from six

1:27

short version is Robert Louis Stevenson thought

1:29

he had another dude in there. What did he call

1:31

him? The other guy? The man inside me by I

1:33

know it was a different author. Uh no, it

1:35

was it was me and the that other

1:38

fellow, that other fellow. Yeah. So

1:40

in the last episode we discussed twentieth

1:42

century research on a small group which

1:46

it was a small subset of the total

1:48

group of maybe fifty to a hundred

1:50

or maybe a little more than a hundred people

1:53

who have ever received a surgical

1:55

intervention called a corpus

1:57

callosotomy, which is a severing

1:59

of the corpus colosum and the corpus

2:01

colosum you can kind of think of as the high speed

2:03

fiber optic cable that connects the two hemispheres

2:06

of the brain together. Now, the surgery

2:08

was originally intended as a kind of last

2:10

resort treatment for people who had

2:13

terrible epileptic seizures. There

2:15

are so few of these patients because now we generally

2:17

have better, safer ways of treating epilepsy

2:20

without such a radical surgery, right

2:22

though these individuals are still around.

2:24

Yes, certainly, in the last episode we mentioned

2:26

that Pinto study that looked at a couple of

2:29

them in seen, And it's

2:31

very possible that we have listeners out

2:33

there who have received this surgery

2:35

as well. And obviously we would love to hear from you

2:37

if there's anything you would like to share. Oh yeah, please,

2:40

if you have a split brain, email us immediately.

2:43

And in fact you mentioned the more recent research.

2:45

We're gonna look at some of that research in today's episode.

2:48

But what neuroscientists learned

2:50

in the twentieth century from this small group

2:52

of patients was truly remarkable.

2:54

Beginning in the nineteen sixties and continuing

2:57

up until recent years, these split brain

2:59

patients have been the subject

3:01

of some of the most interesting research ever

3:04

on the nature of the brain, the mind, and the

3:06

self. So last time we talked about the original

3:08

work of like Sperry and Gazzaniga, who

3:11

discovered many fascinating things about

3:13

how it's possible for one half of the brain

3:15

to not know what the other half is

3:17

thinking, doing, or seeing. This

3:20

time we want to follow up on the subject,

3:22

to explore some more recent studies and

3:24

to ask questions about what these split brain

3:27

studies mean for our lives. And

3:29

to start off, I wanted to mention

3:31

an anecdote I came across from the neuroscientist

3:34

V. S. Ramachandren that he has brought

3:36

up in some of his public talks and work. He

3:39

tells a story of working with one

3:41

particular split brain patient who

3:44

had been trained to respond to questions

3:46

with his right hemisphere. Now you'll remember

3:49

from our last episode that in the case of

3:51

most patients, the right hemisphere of the brain

3:53

cannot speak. It might have some

3:55

very rudimentary language comprehension,

3:58

but generally language and especially

4:01

the production of speech, is dominated

4:03

by areas of the left hemisphere.

4:06

So if you're dealing with the right hemisphere of

4:08

a split brain patient and you show something

4:10

only to their left visual field, which connects

4:12

to the right hemisphere, and you ask

4:15

them about it, what often happens is

4:17

that, for instance, they will not be able

4:19

to say the thing you have

4:21

showed them in their right brain, or

4:24

even explain it in words, but

4:26

they will be able to draw the image

4:28

with their left hand. Now. In the case

4:31

of Ramaschandrian story, he had

4:33

trained a patient in a lab at Caltech

4:35

to answer questions posed directly

4:38

to his right hemisphere only by

4:40

pointing with his left hand to

4:42

response boxes indicating

4:45

yes, no, I don't know now. Of

4:47

course, asking these questions directly to the left

4:49

hemisphere is a lot easier because it just processes

4:51

language normally and you can just ask. But

4:53

he trained the right hemisphere to respond as

4:56

well, so the patient was perfectly

4:58

capable of answering questions like this with

5:00

either hemisphere. Are you on the moon

5:02

right now? Patient says no? Are

5:04

you at cal Tech? Patient says yes.

5:07

But Rama Schondre and then asked the right

5:09

hemisphere do you believe

5:12

in God? And it says yes.

5:15

And he then asked the left hemisphere, the

5:17

language dominant hemisphere, do

5:19

you believe in God? And it says

5:21

no. This is yet another

5:24

one that immediately when I heard the story, the hair stand

5:26

up on the back of my neck. I feel the I

5:28

feel that the goose bumps of of counterintuition

5:32

running through me. Yeah, because

5:34

I feel like, for the for the most part, I

5:36

feel like a lot of us want

5:38

to feel like we have a definitive answer

5:41

to that question, and Queen answers like that,

5:43

Now I'm probably a little

5:45

weirder and that I and I imagined

5:48

a lot of our listeners are like this as well, where someone

5:50

asks you a questions like this and you can be a lot more wishy

5:52

washy and say, well, I don't know. It depends you know,

5:55

yes and no. I feel

5:57

like most of us, if not

5:59

all of us, we can have We can have contry

6:01

contrary ideas in our mind. We

6:03

can have conflicting notions that are that

6:06

are vying for dominance, which me, are you asking?

6:08

Yeah? Askin Jacky? L are you asking hide?

6:11

You know? Hid he? You know he's he's not much

6:13

of a churchgoer, but but Jackal

6:15

he's there every Sunday. Yeah, but he's

6:17

only there to ultimately work his way up the chain

6:19

and usurp the creator. Now

6:23

Rama shonder and jokingly asks a theological

6:26

question about this. He says, you know, assume the old

6:28

dogma that people who have faith in God

6:30

go to Heaven and people who don't go to hell?

6:32

What happens when the split brain patient dies?

6:35

That's a good laugh line. But I

6:38

think this question is actually more profound

6:40

than it seems at first, because we

6:42

may not be divine judges casting

6:45

people into heaven or hell, but we are judges,

6:47

and we judge and evaluate and characterize

6:50

people all the time every day, as

6:52

if they are some sort of essential

6:54

whole. We pick out what we believe

6:56

to be the salient characteristics

6:58

that define a per person, like this

7:01

is their character and

7:03

and now we know who they are. This

7:05

is their mind, this is the person. There

7:08

might be no way to get people to live and behave

7:10

other than this. I mean, there might just be an inextricable

7:13

part of our our personalities that we have to

7:15

judge people as essential holes

7:17

in this way. But I think this research should

7:19

cause us to wonder about our folk beliefs

7:22

about the nature of the mind and the brain and

7:24

what it means to be a person. Yeah,

7:26

I mean, obviously, just to talk about judgment,

7:29

we we have some severe problems with

7:32

with with dealing with the idea that that

7:34

that that there is not a single person

7:36

over a length of time. I mean,

7:39

I mean, obviously, you have people serving prison

7:41

sentences for crimes that an

7:43

earlier iteration of themselves

7:45

committed. What do they say, I'm a different

7:48

person now, and and it is true

7:50

we have all different people than than we once

7:52

were. But you might in some ways

7:54

also be a different person than you were a

7:56

couple of seconds ago, right,

7:59

Or it can be kind of a juggling back and forth. You

8:01

know, I'm a different person in the morning versus

8:03

uh, the afternoon. I mean, I I truly

8:06

feel that, well, I mean, when it comes to questions

8:08

like this, like the theological question. The

8:11

fact is, most people, I think,

8:13

are probably filled with all kinds of doubts

8:15

concerning whatever their beliefs about religion

8:18

are, whether you believe in God or not.

8:20

Either way, you probably sometimes wonder

8:22

if you're wrong or you should. That's

8:24

always a great exercise about anything in

8:26

life, think about the possibility that you're

8:28

wrong, no matter what it is exactly. But

8:31

our everyday experience, of course, is that these

8:33

varying states of doubt they get somehow

8:36

synthesized. Right. You roll

8:38

it all up together, you say, even though whichever

8:40

way I am, whether I believe in God or not, I

8:42

ultimately have one way of answering

8:44

that question. Most people are like this when

8:46

you I mean, you might not be this way, Robert, but a

8:49

lot most people would say I have an answer. Well,

8:51

at the end of the day, or even

8:53

just minute to minute, you

8:56

your brain has to tell a story about who

8:58

you are, right and for that to

9:00

make sense, there still has to be a sentence. There

9:02

still has to be a story, some sort of

9:04

continuation. And even if

9:07

you know my story is a little more uh,

9:09

you know, meandering, it's still a story,

9:12

right, Yeah, Yeah, You're still narrativising

9:14

yourself. You're composing a synthetic

9:16

picture of who I am, and for

9:18

you, I think that picture includes more

9:21

ambiguity than a lot of people are comfortable with.

9:23

But either way, no matter what, you're telling a story

9:25

about yourself. Yeah,

9:27

and so despite your doubts, either way, you

9:29

think of yourself as one whole,

9:31

unified, unified person. You either believe

9:33

in God or you don't, or you identify

9:36

you have some narrative that's in between. You say I'm

9:38

an agnostic or whatever. But this is just one

9:41

case of a generally fascinating

9:43

phenomenon to ponder. What

9:46

if by asking parts of our brains

9:48

separately, we would think different

9:50

things about all kinds of stuff,

9:53

have different feelings, make different

9:55

judgments, make different moral judgments,

9:58

be different people. Is anyone

10:00

aspect of your brain more truly

10:03

authentically you than another

10:05

aspect of your brain? I mean they're both

10:07

in your head right. So today

10:10

this is sort of what we wanted to focus on to talk about

10:12

some of these types of takeaways from

10:14

split brain experiments and more recent research

10:17

on split brain patients. So one

10:19

really fascinating area of research we can

10:21

look at is the idea of moral judgments.

10:24

Robert, can I pose you a scenario and see

10:26

what you think? Yes, go ahead, band

10:28

or snatched me here? Okay? Oh yeah,

10:31

you're taunting me with it every day. I

10:33

still haven't seen it yet, but I will. Okay,

10:35

here's the scenario. Grace and

10:37

her friend are taking a tour of a chemical

10:40

plant. Grace goes over to the coffee

10:42

machine to pour some coffee. Grace's

10:44

friend asks if Grace will put some

10:47

sugar in hers, and there is

10:49

a white powder in a container next to

10:51

the coffee machine. The white

10:53

powder is a very toxic substance

10:56

left behind by a scientist and

10:58

deadly when ingested. The

11:00

container, however, is labeled sugar,

11:02

so Grace believes that the white powder

11:04

is regular sugar. Grace

11:07

puts this white powder in her friend's coffee.

11:09

Her friend drinks the coffee and dies.

11:12

Now the question is, is what Grace did

11:15

morally acceptable or not um

11:19

given this scenario, I mean,

11:21

it seems morally acceptable because she didn't

11:23

know it was toxic. It was labeled sugar. Yeah, she

11:25

was do and she was following

11:27

a request. Yeah, so you are answering

11:30

the question the way almost all adult

11:32

adults tend to answer these questions, that

11:35

what matters is the intention of

11:37

the person doing the action. Uh

11:39

So let me pose it another way. Same scenario.

11:41

Grace and her friend or at a coffee. They're getting

11:43

coffee at the chemical plant. Now

11:45

it turns out that the white powder in the

11:47

container is just sugar and it's

11:50

fine, but it is labeled toxic.

11:53

So Grace believes that the white powder

11:55

is a toxic substance, but she's

11:57

wrong. She puts it in her friend's coffee.

11:59

It's actually just sugar. Her friend drinks

12:01

it. Is what is what Grace did morally

12:03

acceptable? Well, I would say it is forbidden

12:05

because she attempted to poison a friend, exactly

12:08

right. So yeah, this is how I would answer

12:10

as well. This is how almost all adults tend

12:13

to answer these questions. The fact

12:15

is that in general, adults

12:17

tend to think that intentions

12:19

are highly morally relevant, so

12:22

they usually say that a person who accidentally

12:24

poisons a friend of theirs with no intent to

12:26

harm them is not morally blame

12:29

worthy, but somebody who intends

12:31

to poison a friend, even

12:33

if they fail at doing so, is morally

12:35

blameworthy. And of course, like you know,

12:38

there are many aspects that you see this put

12:40

into practice around the world, and like legal injustice

12:42

systems, a person is punished a lot more

12:45

for trying to hurt someone on purpose than for hurting

12:47

them by accident, though often sometimes

12:49

they are still held responsible for hurting

12:51

somebody growth negligent situation,

12:53

you know. Uh, And that's like a middle category,

12:56

right like if you didn't mean to hurt somebody, but you were

12:58

doing something really reckless, send it

13:00

hurt them. That's sort of like a middle culpability

13:03

level, right like if you stored the

13:05

toxic white powder next to the

13:07

sugar and she just didn't look

13:10

closely enough, like you really should you know

13:12

that this place has as sugar

13:14

and toxic poison. You should

13:16

you should know to check which one you're scoop Getting lumps

13:19

out of right, But we wouldn't think that Grace should

13:21

have expected there to be poisoned right next to the

13:23

coffee machine, right. And on

13:25

the other hand, Grace, you can't expect Grace to

13:27

just expect people to be trying to poisoning

13:29

her all the time like they're they're they're certain cultural

13:32

expectations in place here exactly. But

13:34

the weird thing is not everyone

13:37

answers scenarios this way.

13:39

For example, previous research, including

13:41

by the Swiss psychologist Jean piage Uh

13:44

and others later, has found that young

13:46

children and pj found this was up

13:48

to about the age of nine or ten,

13:51

tend to attribute moral guilt and

13:53

deservingness of punishment in exactly

13:56

the opposite way. They assigned

13:58

guilt based on the active consequences

14:01

of the action rather than

14:03

to the knowledge or intentions of the

14:05

agent, meaning that many young children

14:08

will suggest that if Grace means to

14:10

put sugar in her friend's coffee but accidentally

14:13

poisons her friend, she is naughty.

14:16

But if she tries to poison her friend

14:18

and the poison doesn't work, she's fine.

14:20

Well that sounds totally believable. I mean, I now

14:24

that it's pointed out like that. You know, I can see

14:26

I can see various aspects of that popping up

14:29

in just raising a child, you know, where

14:32

where they're gonna they're gonna going to jump to this conclusion.

14:34

You know it certainly not with poisoning, but with

14:37

just sort of the everyday minutia that

14:39

fills your life. Well, they don't reason this way

14:41

every time, Like sometimes intentions

14:43

seem salient to them, but generally

14:46

the rule is after about age ten,

14:49

almost nobody ever thinks

14:51

that accidentally harming someone

14:53

is worse than intending to harm them

14:55

and not harm in failing. Yeah,

14:58

but this, I mean that I've seen this with

15:00

my son though, where like he'll do something

15:02

accidentally and then he's really hard

15:04

on himself for having for

15:06

for quote, being bad or having you know, done

15:08

something bad and you have to reassure him you

15:10

know this was you know, there was an accident,

15:13

but you know it's all cool. Well, this is a

15:15

fascinating phenomenon on its own.

15:17

I mean, before we even get to how this applies to the split

15:19

brain experiments for example, you

15:21

know, I went back, I was like, is this really true? So I

15:23

was reading some of Pj's work on this question

15:26

from a book of his. And so here's one of the scenarios

15:28

he describes when interviewing young children.

15:31

Okay, the first one is, uh this, uh

15:34

about this little boy named John, Robert, do

15:36

you want to read about John? Sure? A

15:38

little boy who is called John is in his room.

15:40

He has called to dinner. He goes into

15:43

the dining room. But behind the door

15:45

there was a chair, and on the chair

15:47

there was a tray with fifteen cups on

15:49

it. John couldn't have known that there was

15:51

all this behind the door. He goes

15:54

in the door, knocks against the tray, Bang,

15:56

go the fifteen cups and they all

15:58

get broken. All right. Here's the other scenario.

16:00

Once there was a little boy whose name was Henry.

16:03

One day when his mother was out, he tried to

16:05

get some jam out of the cupboard. He

16:07

climbed up onto a chair and stretched

16:10

out his arm, but the jam was too high

16:12

up and he couldn't reach it and have any

16:15

But while he was trying to get it, he knocked

16:17

over a cup. The cup fell down and

16:19

broke. Ah.

16:21

So, yeah, we have a situation where John

16:25

was just going about normal

16:27

everyday. How stuff he didn't know where some stuff

16:29

was. Yeah, and it stuff got broken. But

16:32

Henry is trying to do something he shouldn't and

16:34

then accidentally break something. But

16:37

here then, PJ includes

16:39

a little transcript of a dialogue with

16:41

a six year old boy named Geo about

16:43

these stories. Robert, do you want

16:45

to be Geo? I'll be the child? Yes? Okay,

16:49

have you understood these stories? Yes?

16:52

What did the first boy do? He broke

16:54

eleven cups? And the second

16:56

one he broke a cup by moving roughly?

16:59

Why did the swan break the cups because

17:01

the door knocked them in the second he

17:03

was clumsy when he was getting the jam

17:06

the cup fell down? How did Geo

17:08

become Richard O'Brien? Okay?

17:10

No, sorry? Going on? Is one of the boys

17:13

naughtier than the other? The first is

17:15

because he knocked over twelve cups? If

17:17

you were the daddy, which one would you punish

17:20

most? To one who broke twelve cups?

17:22

Why did he break them? The door shut too

17:24

hard and knocked them. He didn't do it on purpose?

17:26

And why did the other boy break a cup? He wanted

17:29

to get the jam. He moved too

17:31

far, the cup got a broken.

17:34

Why did he want the jam? Because he was all alone?

17:36

Because his mother, wasn't there have

17:38

you got a brother, no, a little sister. Well,

17:41

if it was you who had broken the twelve cups

17:43

when you went into the room and your little

17:45

sister had broken the one cup while she

17:47

was trying to get the jam, which of you

17:50

would be punished most severely? Me?

17:52

Because I broke more within one cup. Robert.

17:55

First of all, I'm gonna give a rave view to

17:57

your creepy child voice. That was like

17:59

a beau, a full riff raff French

18:01

geo. I think I was trying to go for like a Damian

18:03

child or something. But you know, Richard O'Brien

18:06

is still pretty good. It's all for you

18:08

riff raff. But this is illuminating.

18:10

This shows, Uh, this shows

18:12

how the six year old is thinking about these

18:15

two scenarios in applying judgment. Yes,

18:17

almost no adult reasons this way

18:19

right right, So this on its own

18:21

is fascinating to me. Why this discrepancy

18:24

in the moral reasoning of children and adults?

18:26

And what causes the change? You know? POJ

18:29

says the change tends to happen somewhere

18:31

in late childhood, you know, somewhere between

18:33

like uh, like seven

18:35

and nine or ten. This change really

18:38

takes over and people still and the children

18:40

start reasoning about moral intentions

18:42

and moral knowledge as opposed to

18:44

just the objective outcomes. Uh.

18:47

One issue I think that plays into this maturation

18:49

process in moral judgments is of course going

18:51

to be the development of the sophistication

18:54

of theory of mind, and

18:56

theory of mind of course is the ability to understand

18:59

that others have into mental states

19:01

and imagine what those states are. But this clearly

19:03

can't be the only factor, because

19:06

most children develop theory of mind by

19:08

around age five or so, and

19:10

a significant number of them think outcomes

19:12

matter more than intentions for guilt until

19:14

around age nine or so, So

19:17

there must be something else happening also,

19:20

so they're able to either able to contemplate

19:22

other mind states, and yet they're

19:24

still sticking to this. Uh,

19:26

this this harsh form of judgment. Yeah.

19:29

And again, to be clear, not in every

19:31

case, because sometimes children will seem to think

19:33

intentions matter, but they clearly they they

19:35

default to this far more than adults

19:38

would. Now, there's one reason to think that, of course,

19:40

theory of mind is important for making a

19:42

mature moral judgments the kind adults

19:44

make based on knowledge and intentions.

19:46

For the obvious reason that when you make

19:49

a judgment considering a state of mind, including

19:51

the knowledge and intentions of the person who broke

19:53

the cups or put the powder in the coffee or

19:55

whatever, you need to imagine their state

19:58

of mind, like you have to have that in your rain

20:00

in order to evaluate whether they were guilty

20:02

or not. And so in like two thousand and eight

20:04

two thousand nine, researchers

20:06

named Leanne Young and Rebecca Sacks

20:09

used neuroimaging to find evidence that

20:11

when you try to ascribe beliefs

20:13

and intentions to other people, essentially

20:16

when you practice theory of mind and you're

20:18

thinking about other minds, it involves

20:20

processes that are lateralized

20:23

their primarily on one side

20:25

of the brain, specifically in the right

20:27

temporal parietal junction

20:30

or TPJ. And in a

20:32

two thousand nine study, Young and Sacks found that

20:34

uh temporal parietal junction activity

20:36

in the right hemisphere only appeared

20:39

when people tried to assess the moral

20:41

significance of things like accidental

20:43

harms when you hurt somebody but you didn't

20:45

mean to. So if I tell you a story

20:48

about Jeffrey accidentally knocking

20:50

somebody into the Grand Canyon and then I

20:52

ask you to think about whether Jeffrey

20:55

did something morally wrong or not. Whatever

20:57

thinking you use to answer that question

20:59

will probably we involve the t PJ

21:01

on the right side. But oh,

21:04

what if the part of your brain

21:06

that's getting that's interacting with the language

21:09

that poses this question to you, cannot

21:11

retrieve information from the lateralized

21:14

TPJ the right side the brain.

21:17

Yes, so we're gonna look at the two thousand

21:19

tens study from Neuropsychologia

21:22

called Abnormal Moral Reasoning and Complete

21:24

and partial calisotomy Patients by

21:27

Miller, Senate, Armstrong, Young, King,

21:30

Pagi, Fabri, Polinara,

21:33

and Gazanaga. So the authors begin

21:35

by looking at the state of affairs we just talked

21:37

about, uh, with the you know, the

21:40

localization in the right hemisphere of this

21:42

part of the brain that's used in imagining

21:44

other minds and making judgments about something

21:46

like the intentions of somebody

21:49

in reference to moral guilt and the

21:51

right quote. These findings suggest that patients

21:53

with disconnected hemispheres would

21:55

provide abnormal moral judgments

21:57

on accidental harms and fail

22:00

old attempts to harm, since normal

22:02

judgments in these cases require information

22:04

about beliefs and intentions from

22:06

the right brain to reach the judgmental

22:09

processes in the left brain. So they

22:11

ran a test. They used six

22:13

split brain patients who have had

22:15

either a partial or total sectioning

22:18

of the corpus colosum and compared

22:20

that with twenty two normal control subjects.

22:22

Now verbally, so what they did is verbally

22:25

out loud conducted interviews

22:27

posing moral judgment scenarios

22:30

like the sugar or poison story we talked

22:32

about with Grace, but also other ones like it

22:35

uh. They conducted these interviews verbally,

22:37

asking the subjects about whether different types

22:40

of action in the scenario were morally

22:42

acceptable or not. And remember, of course,

22:44

which hemisphere of the brain is the one primarily

22:46

responsible for speech. It's the left.

22:49

So if you're having a verbal interview with somebody,

22:51

their left hemisphere is sort of like it's

22:53

like the gatekeeper right that will

22:56

in most cases be dominating

22:58

the input and output of the brain you're

23:00

interacting with, since the input and

23:02

output is all spoken words. So

23:04

if you have to give your answers in words

23:06

coming from your left hemisphere and

23:08

it can't communicate very well with your right

23:11

hemisphere or at all with your right hemisphere,

23:13

which is the home of an important part

23:15

of the brain that used to think about the knowledge

23:18

and intentions of other people. Your verbal

23:20

answers on subjects requiring this kind

23:22

of knowledge may very well be impaired,

23:25

and the results, it turned out, supported

23:27

this hypothesis. The control subjects,

23:29

the people without split brains, they tended

23:32

to judge just like we did earlier. Like they

23:34

judged based on intentions, well, did grace

23:37

mean to harm somebody or not? And that was the

23:39

mainly salient thing. The split

23:41

brain patients did so far less

23:43

consistently, more often judging

23:46

based purely on outcomes, the way

23:48

many young children did and pj's

23:50

work, and also

23:52

to supplement their experiment, they tested

23:54

two of the split brain patient's ability

23:56

to detect hypothetical faux

23:59

pause. For example, a

24:01

person quote telling somebody how much

24:03

they dislike a bowl while

24:05

forgetting that the person had given them

24:07

that bowl as a wedding present. Uh.

24:10

And of course, the idea is that a person who's unable

24:12

like if you're unable to give spoken answers

24:14

involving the theory of mind function localized

24:17

in the right TPJ, you will find

24:19

it significantly harder to detect

24:22

a faux paw which requires you to think

24:24

about other minds, and the split

24:26

brain difference held true here. Out of

24:28

tin faux pause, they said, patient

24:31

VP successfully detected only

24:33

six and patient j W correctly

24:36

identified only four, whereas

24:38

control subjects all identified a hundred

24:41

of the faux pause. So when they were given a scenario

24:43

like that and asked did something awkward happen normal

24:45

people? They detected every time. In

24:48

fact, one of the things that I would say our brains

24:50

are most highly suited

24:52

for is detecting social awkwardness

24:54

and stuff, right, Yeah, And

24:56

it is interesting to notice this emerging

24:58

in younger or children too, you

25:01

know, like you see this kind of awareness

25:03

coming online, you know where they're

25:05

able to identify faux pause as

25:07

opposed to just be like the master of

25:09

folk pause. Well do you ever notice

25:12

I wonder if like adolescence

25:15

and teenage years are kind of an error.

25:17

It's like it's a time when you were almost

25:20

like hyper aware of social awkwardness.

25:23

Does that ring true to you? Um

25:26

to a certain extent? But I don't know. I've run into

25:28

some teens who I mean, there

25:31

are a lot of different types of brains out

25:33

there, but I mean I've run into some teams that that definitely

25:36

have a lot of social awkwardness or

25:38

or definitely walk into a lot of faux

25:41

pas. So I don't know. Well, I mean, just because

25:43

you are awkward doesn't mean you're not aware of awkwardness,

25:46

right, Yeah,

25:48

certainly awkwardness does seem to define

25:50

that buried in one's life. That

25:53

would be that might be something to come back to. I know we've done

25:55

episodes in the past on the teenage brain, in

25:57

the particular aspects of the team

26:00

age brain. I wonder if there's a if

26:02

there's an entire episode on the science of awkwardness.

26:05

Well, I think we should take a quick break and then when we come

26:07

back we can discuss this study a little more

26:10

than alright,

26:13

we're back, all right. So we've just discussed this

26:15

study about split brain patients and

26:17

moral judgments and found that split

26:19

brain patients, at least in this one study, made

26:22

moral judgments based on outcomes

26:25

rather than on intentions, more

26:27

like children sometimes do instead

26:29

of the way that adults normally do. Um,

26:32

And this is fascinating. Now, of course, we

26:34

should acknowledge some potential drawbacks

26:36

of this experiment. Like all split brain

26:39

studies, by necessity, it's a small

26:41

sample, right, you know, there aren't that many of these

26:43

people out there, and even a smaller subset

26:45

of them want to participate in

26:47

experiments like this, But so it's almost on

26:49

the scale of anecdote, so you have to be careful

26:52

about drawing strong conclusions

26:54

from the results. Also, there are some

26:56

other detailed complications in

26:58

the study, such as questions about why

27:00

the effect also manifested impartial

27:02

calisotomy patients, so when the authors

27:05

had not expected it to they thought it would only

27:07

appear in the full calisotomy patients.

27:09

And then also about where the exact

27:12

side of decoding the beliefs of others is located.

27:14

Maybe it's not exactly the TPJ but

27:16

more anterior to it. Uh So

27:18

that's some peripheral issues. But nevertheless,

27:21

if we tentatively accept these results

27:23

like how fascinating, and it leads

27:25

to these questions like here's one.

27:28

You know we discussed in the last episode

27:30

that despite the radical nature

27:32

of the surgery that cuts the corpus

27:34

colossum and the amazing neurological

27:36

anomalies that can arise from it under lab

27:39

conditions, generally most patients

27:41

and patient families report totally normal

27:43

functionality no major changes

27:46

in personality or behavior after the surgery.

27:48

If it's changing their moral reasoning

27:51

in in this kind of way, how could

27:53

that be possible? I mean yeah,

27:55

because certainly from your own standpoint,

27:57

I mean, you were if you're

28:00

moral compass has changed than you

28:02

I mean, you can't see the forest for the trees,

28:05

right, But but you're gonna be

28:07

surrounded by other people who

28:09

would be able to identify the change.

28:11

But presumably yeah, you would think so,

28:14

I mean if there is actually a change. So

28:17

uh. And and also like, yeah, you think

28:19

that moral judgments sort of go to the heart

28:21

of a person's personality, right, like

28:23

that that is your character, that is who you

28:25

are as a person, or at least how you think about

28:28

that subject. Right. You would think there would be anecdotes

28:31

out there about like, yeah, my uncle

28:33

had this surgery and then his like his

28:35

his political ideology changed afterwards,

28:38

or yeah you have been something to that effect. But

28:40

we have not seen that in referenced in any

28:43

of these studies. So, if these results from

28:45

this two thousand ten studies are sound, what

28:47

accounts for the discrepancy here? And

28:49

the authors they posit three

28:51

possible answers. One is, well, maybe

28:54

there are profound personality changes

28:56

in split brain patients that have gone unnoticed

28:58

or unreported. They don't think this

29:01

is very likely because quote, most reports

29:03

from family members suggest no changes

29:05

in mental functions or personality,

29:08

and early studies that thoroughly tested

29:10

patients pre and postoperatively

29:12

reported no changes in cognitive

29:14

functioning. So they feel pretty robustly

29:17

that these patients in their day to day lives

29:19

are not really changed. The

29:22

other possibility as well. Maybe it's just because

29:25

the judgment tasks here have no relevance

29:27

to real life. But I mean,

29:29

we use judgments like this all the time, like did

29:31

somebody mean to do something that? That seems

29:33

like something that comes up every day? Yeah, I

29:35

mean I jokingly brought up

29:38

Bandersnatch the Town Adventure

29:40

Black Mirror episode on Netflix earlier,

29:43

But like I I found myself in watching

29:45

that, like having to make choices about moral

29:47

choices for the character. I found

29:50

myself very uncomfortable with with

29:52

choices that that I found morally

29:54

reprehensible, even though it's

29:56

just purely hypothetical. It's just

29:58

a story, right, all right? What else do we

30:00

have? What other possible answers? Well, the third

30:02

possibility is what the researchers think is probably

30:05

the case, which is that even though

30:07

this impairment is manifested in the lab,

30:10

in reality it somehow gets compensated

30:12

for somehow in daily life.

30:14

Other brain regions and

30:17

functions or alternative processes

30:19

kick in to counteract whatever

30:21

is causing people to give these unusual

30:24

answers in the lab condition. The

30:26

brain finds a way, yes, so what would

30:28

it be, Well, what about a version

30:30

of something not exactly but something like

30:33

the system one versus system to schema.

30:36

Of course, now, of course we can remind

30:38

people what the system one in the system to themes

30:40

are. Well, it's like, basically like the different

30:42

ways of dealing with the threat of the tiger. There's

30:44

the way of dealing with the tiger by avoiding

30:47

it and not going to the places where the tiger is,

30:49

and then there's the way of dealing with the tiger where

30:52

you have to fight it re flee from it. So

30:54

I think we'd have the order inverted there. But yeah,

30:56

so like system too is generally

30:58

considered to be like low deliberate,

31:01

methodical, logical thinking

31:03

about how to solve problems, whereas system

31:06

one is fast, reactive,

31:08

intuitive, implicit right

31:11

punch the tiger in the nose and run for it. And we

31:13

need both for life. I mean, system

31:15

to reactions might be less

31:18

likely to give us erroneous results.

31:20

But you don't have time to use system to thinking

31:22

on everything. You know, you're trying

31:25

to get through life. Most of the time. You need to

31:27

make quick judgments that are not overly

31:29

concerned. You know, you can't overthink, like

31:31

which foot I'm gonna put in front of the other right

31:33

now? Right? Yeah, So so you've got

31:35

to be prepared for either tiger, the distance

31:38

tiger or the close tiger.

31:40

And so maybe the idea here is

31:42

that the right TPJ is

31:44

somehow necessary for making

31:47

fast implicit system

31:49

one type decisions about

31:52

judging more, you know, the moral valance of an

31:54

action and imagining theory of mind.

31:56

But that you can if you can't do that,

31:59

you can somehow do the same thing. It

32:01

just takes longer, and it's is

32:03

a more difficult, deliberate process

32:06

that the brain has to go through if

32:08

it can't rely on this brain region

32:10

that does does this fast for you normally

32:13

the author's right quote. If the patients

32:15

do not have access to the fast implicit

32:18

systems for ascribing beliefs to others.

32:20

Their initial automatic moral judgments

32:23

might not take into account beliefs

32:25

of others, but you know, they're slow

32:27

reason deliberate thinking system can compensate,

32:30

it can kick in. Then again, I mean, I wonder

32:32

how this, if this is the case, and we'll

32:35

discuss this a little more, how this

32:37

wouldn't manifest in normal life, because I feel

32:39

like we use the fast intuitive system

32:41

one type process to make morally relevant

32:43

judgments all the time. I

32:46

mean, we're constantly making sort

32:48

of unfair moral judgments

32:50

about things that would not you know, they're

32:52

not using the kind of reasoning that you would

32:54

sit down and deliberate about. Think

32:56

about how often you get mad at somebody

32:58

because they do something accidentally, and

33:01

if you were forced to stop and think about it, you're

33:03

like, Okay, no they didn't, they didn't mean to

33:05

do that. There's no reason to morally

33:07

blame them. You just get mad in

33:09

the moment and you're just like, why are you in my way?

33:11

Or why did you do that? Yeah? Yeah, totally.

33:15

This is you know, this like the the other split

33:17

brain experiments we're looking at, though it

33:19

reminds me of say, if you're watching a three

33:21

D film and you have the glasses on, and

33:23

then you take the glasses off, and

33:26

you you you see that there is there's

33:28

there's some sort of uh uh, you

33:30

know, there's a lack of unity there. Or

33:32

it's like you're you're staring through the stereo view

33:34

and then you look at the card and you see that it's two images

33:36

side by side to create the united

33:39

whole. Like it's it's a glimpse

33:42

at the duality

33:44

that that is making the at least,

33:46

you know, the sort of the illusion, the experience of the whole

33:48

possible. Um. But

33:51

but but then it's it's we we shouldn't fall

33:54

under the we shouldn't

33:56

then fall into the trap of thinking that it is dual

33:58

by nature. It's like taking the US is up and saying,

34:00

oh, the world is really red, the world is

34:02

really blue. Well, no, no, that the world is

34:04

the thing that comes together. Yeah, And and

34:06

the glasses are designed to give you this three

34:09

D image the same way that the brain

34:11

is designed by evolution to have compensating

34:13

processes, to have one way of doing something

34:16

or another way of doing something depending on the

34:18

situational need. And so, of course

34:20

I indicated that the authors tend to think this

34:22

third answer is probably the correct one about

34:25

the compensating mechanism taking over in

34:27

real life scenarios. Uh And

34:29

as evidence, they cite the fact that in the

34:32

experiment, split brain patients

34:34

would sometimes spontaneously

34:37

blurred out a rationalization

34:39

of an answer that ignored intentions,

34:42

almost as if after giving the answer

34:44

out loud that ignored intentions,

34:47

they realized something was wrong

34:49

with it. So here's one example.

34:52

A split brain patient named JW hurt

34:54

a scenario where a waitress thought

34:57

that serving sesame seeds to a

34:59

customer would give him a terrible

35:01

allergic reaction. She thought he was allergic

35:03

to sesame seeds. She tried, she

35:06

served him sesame seeds, but

35:08

it turns out he wasn't actually allergic.

35:10

She was wrong about that, and the seeds didn't hurt

35:13

him, even though she thought they would. J

35:15

W said the waitress had done nothing wrong.

35:18

Then he paused for a few moments, then spontaneously

35:21

blurted out, sesame seeds are

35:23

tiny little things. They don't hurt nobody,

35:27

you know. It's it's almost as if he was

35:29

searching for a post talk rationalization

35:32

of an answer he'd already given, but

35:35

which began to seem wrong to

35:37

him as it sank in, you know, given

35:39

a few more seconds to think about it, and

35:41

the patient j W alone,

35:43

they reported spontaneously blurted

35:45

out rationalizations like this in

35:48

five of the twenty four scenarios,

35:50

so like more than a fifth, and

35:52

again, I just think back to the fact,

35:54

you know, post talk rationalization is a huge

35:57

part of life. We talked about this in the last episode

35:59

with the the writer

36:01

and the elephant, right, like, how often do

36:04

we do things that honestly we don't

36:06

understand why we did them, but we just

36:08

come up with a story, and we even believe

36:11

that story ourselves as an explanation

36:13

for why we did it. But you can see clear

36:15

evidence that that is not the reason. Right,

36:18

Yeah, you end up telling yourself, well

36:20

I wanted that product, or perhaps

36:22

oh well you might even you know, you

36:24

might even end up telling you so the st of the story

36:26

about how you were tricked into buying it. But

36:28

but there is some sort of rationalization about

36:31

the about the movements

36:34

of the beast beneath you. Alright,

36:36

on that note, we're going to take another break, but we'll be

36:38

right back. Than all

36:41

right, we're back, Okay, I think we should

36:43

take a look at another study about

36:46

moral judgment and the division

36:49

of the brain hemispheres. So this

36:51

is one from Royal Society Open

36:53

Science from called moral

36:56

judgment by the disconnected left

36:58

and right cerebral hemispheres, a split

37:00

brain investigation, and this is by Steckler,

37:03

Hamlin, Miller, King and Kingstone.

37:06

Uh. And when you get king and Kingstone together, you

37:08

never know what's gonna happen. So to

37:10

recap from the last study, we know that

37:12

lots of parts of the brain are used

37:15

in making moral judgments, including you

37:17

know, regions and networks in the left hemisphere

37:20

such as the the left medial prefrontal

37:22

cortex, the left temporal parietal

37:24

junction, and the left singulate. But

37:27

in order to make moral decisions based

37:29

on people's intentions, when you're

37:31

imagining what other people mean

37:33

to do and what they know, we seem

37:35

to require use of an area

37:38

in or around the area mentioned

37:40

in the last study, the right tempo

37:42

parietal junction or rTPJ.

37:45

And it seems that without it you can't properly

37:47

imagine other people's intentions

37:49

and beliefs to make a quick moral

37:51

judgment. So here's a question. Then

37:54

the right hemisphere seems necessary

37:56

in making a quick moral judgment

37:59

in the normal way based on people's intent,

38:01

But is it sufficient Could

38:03

the right hemisphere alone make

38:05

a judgment? So the authors try

38:07

to find out with the help of a split brain

38:09

patient. They write, quote, here we use

38:11

non linguistic morality

38:14

plays with split brain patient j

38:16

W to examine the moral judgments

38:19

of the disconnected right hemisphere.

38:21

So obviously you've got a problem if you're

38:23

trying to just talk to the right hemisphere, because

38:25

the right hemisphere is not going to do super

38:28

well at understanding a verbal scenario

38:31

you describe to them. Right it doesn't want to listen to you

38:33

tell a story. It doesn't want a lot of dialogue.

38:35

It just wants some sweet, muted

38:38

YouTube action the silent film hemisphere.

38:41

And again not to not to be overly simplistic,

38:43

because we do know from some research that the right

38:45

brain does seem to understand some

38:48

language, it's just not nearly as linguistically

38:50

sophisticated as the left hemisphere.

38:53

Um So they use these nonverbal

38:55

videos of people trying to help someone

38:57

and succeeding or failing, or

39:00

trying to thwart someone and succeeding

39:02

or failing. So an example might be somebody's

39:05

trying to get something down off of a high shelf,

39:08

and then somebody either like bumps

39:10

into them to try to knock them off the shelf

39:13

or tries to help them get the thing down or

39:15

something like that. And then they had j W

39:17

watch all these videos and point

39:19

with the finger of a specific hand

39:21

which is controlled by the opposite hemisphere,

39:23

to indicate which character was nicer.

39:27

So in a series of test sessions like this over

39:29

the course of a year, they found that JW

39:31

was able to make pretty normal intent

39:33

based judgments with his right

39:35

hemisphere alone pointing with his left

39:38

hand, but had a lot more trouble

39:40

making intent based judgments with the left

39:43

left hemisphere, in some cases

39:45

seeming to respond almost at random

39:47

with the left hemisphere. And yet the left

39:49

hemisphere is the hemisphere that the talks,

39:52

so there were more signs of the left hemisphere

39:54

making up ex post facto justifications

39:58

when it did not understand what what

40:00

the person had done. For example, after

40:03

one video, when asked why

40:05

he made the choice he did of which character

40:07

was nicer, JW just offered

40:09

the rationalization that blonds

40:11

can't be trusted. When one of the actors

40:13

in the video was blonde. So

40:16

here's one question why the discrepancy

40:18

with the last study. In the last study, the

40:20

left hemisphere defaulted more often

40:22

in making moral judgments based on, remember

40:25

the objective good or bad outcomes,

40:28

rather than people's intentions. Why did

40:30

it seem to make judgments at random this

40:32

time? So the authors say, maybe in the

40:34

previous study it's because subjects were explicitly

40:37

asked to judge whether a behavior was morally

40:39

acceptable or not, and in this study

40:41

instead, the subject was just asked who's

40:44

nicer, Maybe to the left hemisphere,

40:46

you know, separated and on its own devices.

40:49

Maybe it doesn't use any kind of

40:51

moral reasoning to judge who is nicer,

40:53

but uses some other kind of rubric. Maybe

40:55

nicer means something non moral

40:58

to it. Then again, there's

41:00

also the possibility, well, you know, we're

41:02

again limited to small sample sizes,

41:05

in this case very small of just one patient.

41:07

So it's possible that maybe JW

41:10

is just unusual. That's always a thing to consider

41:12

with this kind of study, and it's what you know,

41:14

unfortunately, what what this sort of research

41:17

is by nature limited to one

41:19

of the things that I think is interesting and looking at this

41:21

research, we we've looked at today with the different

41:24

kinds of moral reasoning in the different

41:26

hemispheres, is that we see again

41:28

the role of something that we talked about

41:30

in in part one of this series back

41:32

in the first episode, about the

41:35

role of what's thought of as the interpreter,

41:37

or at least in Michael Gazzaniga's theory,

41:39

that the interpreter in the left hemisphere.

41:42

So the idea is, of course, that your brain

41:44

constantly makes up stories to

41:47

explain why you just did what you did.

41:49

But split brain research indicates that we have

41:51

no guarantee that the stories

41:54

we give to explain our own behaviors

41:56

have any explanatory power at all.

41:58

A lot of times it seems more like they are just

42:00

confabulated post talk rationalizations,

42:04

that you just came up with something

42:06

to explain something you did when you really

42:08

have no idea why you did what you did.

42:10

The brain just pulled it out of its own button.

42:13

If the brain had a butt. In the previous experiments,

42:15

this had to do with stuff like why did

42:18

you draw this picture you know? Or why did

42:20

you pick this object out of a drawer with

42:22

your left hand when you couldn't name that object

42:24

in speech, or anything like that, and

42:27

people would make up excuses. Now you

42:29

you see a similar kind of thing perhaps going

42:31

on with making moral judgments. And

42:34

I think that there is some research

42:36

that this is indicative not

42:38

just of something about split brain

42:40

patients, but of something larger about

42:43

this phenomenon of interpretation

42:45

in the left hemisphere and of the human

42:47

condition itself. Yeah,

42:50

like we've we've touched on in this episode Sode,

42:52

in the previous episode, and in any other episodes

42:54

before. It's like there's always a story that is told,

42:56

right, We're constantly telling

42:59

a story about ourselves, and that story

43:01

involves rationalizations, rationalizations

43:04

for our actions and uh and

43:06

interpretations of who we are and why

43:08

we're doing everything we do exactly.

43:10

And it happens in multiple level. It happens

43:12

to explain why you have why you took certain

43:15

actions that you can't actually explain.

43:17

It happens to explain why your

43:19

mood changes. Because Aniga writes

43:21

about this that there are these cases where

43:23

you can have somebody who's has a mood shift

43:26

triggered, like for example, you

43:28

get you have split brain patients where you show

43:30

some positive or negative mood, triggering

43:32

stimulus to the right hemisphere, and then

43:34

the speaking part of the brain expresses

43:37

being upset, but then

43:39

we'll be unable to express why, and we'll

43:41

just make up a story about why, like, well,

43:43

because you did this thing that made me upset.

43:46

And crucially, I think it seems

43:48

to be the case that when we make up stories like

43:50

this, they're not just you know,

43:52

they're not just outward facing. It's not just pr

43:55

for the brain, it's inward

43:57

facing. We are convincing our cell

44:00

that this made up story is correct. Yeah,

44:02

it helps create like the internal reality

44:05

that we cling to. Yeah, exactly. And

44:07

so it's it's interesting, I think, to

44:10

notice that this appears to be linked

44:12

to the brain's capacity for language.

44:15

That, at least, according to Kazaniga's theory

44:17

here, if he's correct, the part

44:19

of the brain that makes up explanations

44:22

for why something happened is also highly

44:24

associated with the part of the brain that

44:27

is able to talk about things. And

44:29

that very well might not be an accident.

44:32

It seems possible there's a link between the

44:34

networks of the brain that have the most

44:36

to do with generating conscious experience

44:39

and the networks of the brain that are able to

44:41

put things into words. And that's fascinating

44:44

alright. So under under Gazaniga's ideas

44:46

here, the consciousness generating

44:49

capacity is located primarily in the

44:51

left hemisphere. And what happens when you have

44:53

a split brain patient is you essentially

44:55

cut off the conscious part

44:58

of the brain's access to half

45:00

of what the brain is doing, right, Yeah,

45:03

though that half of the brain is still over there

45:05

doing stuff. Yeah. With with each example

45:07

that we we we pull out here, each each

45:10

study, it is still very

45:12

difficult to really grasp. You know. It's it's

45:14

again this kind of you can't see the forest for the tree

45:16

situation. It's hard to imagine

45:19

the consciousness we're experiencing, uh,

45:22

in a in a system that's been divided,

45:25

you know. Well, yeah, that's one thing that that's

45:27

so interesting here. I think one way you could

45:29

misunderstand what the split brain

45:32

cases show is that if

45:34

you cut the brain in half, you generate

45:36

two conscious, independent

45:39

people. And that appears to not be

45:41

the case. People still get the man with two

45:43

brains, like with Steve Martin, right, you get

45:46

one conscious experience. The person generally

45:48

does not report feeling any different,

45:50

as we talked about last time, Their behavior

45:53

and stuff is generally about the same as

45:55

it was before, except you

45:57

have the ability to show under certain conditions,

46:00

there's this whole half of the brain over there

46:02

doing things that you cannot be

46:04

conscious of or put into words. So

46:07

it can still sense, it can still control

46:09

the body is just apparently not integrating

46:12

or synthesizing into whatever

46:14

creates your conscious experience,

46:17

which I mean in a way

46:19

that is that that is sort of like having the other

46:21

fellow in there, in the words of Robert

46:23

Louis Stevenson. Now to bring up

46:25

another literary example. We've

46:28

talked about Peter Watt's book Blindside on the

46:30

program before. I'm sure you remember

46:32

the character Siri Keaton, who loses

46:35

his brains left hemisphere to infection,

46:38

and and and and and as a result of that,

46:40

entire hemisphere is largely or entirely

46:43

replaced with like a cybernetic implant.

46:45

Yes, and this creates a lot of the strange

46:47

psychology of the narrator in that book.

46:50

Yes, yes, I can help and think

46:52

of that. When we were talking about this, also,

46:54

I was reminded of a character in the book Consider

46:57

Felibus by Ian M. Banks, who

47:00

who has tweaked his brain

47:02

so that you can engage in uni hemispheric sleep. We

47:04

didn't even get into that in in this episode.

47:06

But of course this is something that for instance, dolphins

47:08

can do. Uh, it can't just

47:10

go to sleep, so they'll put one side of their

47:13

brain, one hemisphere of the brain to sleep at

47:15

a time. And so and then that particular

47:17

book, it was he was probably leaning

47:19

a little bit into sort of the left

47:21

brain right brain myth a bit,

47:24

but he was discussing how if

47:26

one side of the human brain is sleeping

47:28

and then only one side is awake, you are going

47:30

to have a different expression of that individual.

47:33

Now, if the Gazonica model of consciousness

47:36

is correct, Uh, that wouldn't

47:38

make me wonder that if a human were capable

47:40

of uni hemispheric sleep, would the

47:42

human be conscious while

47:45

the right brain is sleeping and not

47:47

conscious while the left brain is sleeping,

47:50

and yet while the left brain is sleeping,

47:52

still awake, just not conscious. Well,

47:54

I guess you'd ultimately and

47:56

then you'd have to work out exactly how this would

47:58

work in a human scenario. But you as long as one

48:00

side would be awake to alert the other side

48:02

when full brain alertness

48:05

was required, you know that

48:07

would that would be the main prerequisite.

48:10

I just thought to look this up. I wish

48:13

I thought before we came in here, whether there are

48:15

any lateralization properties of sleepwalking.

48:18

Oh, that would be good too. Well, we we need to come back

48:20

and discuss sleepwalking in in depth,

48:23

because I'm sure there's a whole episode just right there. We've

48:25

done some episodes on what paras

48:27

omnia in the past, like sort of covering

48:30

various weird sleep phenomena.

48:33

But yeah, that would be a fun one to come back

48:35

to, for sure. You know. Speaking of Peter

48:37

Watts, I remember he's written about

48:39

this idea of if thoughts

48:41

were inserted into your brain from the

48:43

outside, would you even perceive them

48:46

as alien or would you just perceive

48:48

them as self? Because Gazzaniga's

48:50

left brain interpreter model might be totally

48:52

wrong, of course, but let's just assume for a minute that

48:54

it is correct. Things happen unconsciously

48:57

in modules all throughout the brain, and

48:59

then regions in the left hemisphere have the

49:01

job of synthesizing all that activity

49:03

and generating a story that explains

49:05

to you why your brain just

49:07

did something. And this interpreter

49:09

function is somehow crucial to what we think

49:12

of as the human experience of consciousness.

49:14

Consciousness is sort of is this story

49:17

we tell about why we're doing

49:19

things and who we are now. Normally,

49:21

if something enters your left visual field,

49:23

goes to the right hemisphere, gets processed

49:26

there, and then travels to the interpreter and the left

49:28

hemisphere through the corpus closum. That doesn't

49:30

feel like you're getting that thought or information

49:33

or experience from somewhere else. It's all

49:35

just self. It all just gets interpreted

49:37

and it's you. So if we

49:39

were to start using some kind of brain to

49:42

brain interface or a computer to brain

49:44

interface where it were possible to transmit

49:47

thoughts into the brain from

49:49

outside, and who knows if that's really possible,

49:51

of course, but just assume would we be

49:54

able to tell the externally

49:56

inserted thoughts the sort of incoming

49:58

brain mail from activity

50:00

arising in networks and modules natively

50:03

throughout the brain itself, or

50:05

would it just all go to the interpreter

50:07

the same way. So you could send an

50:09

alien thought into somebody's head and

50:12

have them immediately rationalize it as

50:14

part of the interpret itself the same

50:16

way they would if it came from some network

50:18

in the right hemisphere, would they just think,

50:20

yep, this is just me thinking I

50:23

feel like we're borderline there

50:25

with certain individuals in their use of smartphones.

50:28

Oh yeah, where imagine

50:31

you and I'm listeners out there, you've had a similar

50:33

experience. We would be in a conversation with someone and

50:36

they'll without a phone to remember something.

50:38

But but but often like not in

50:40

a way where it's like, oh yeah, I forget

50:42

that, let me research it, More like, let me

50:44

access this part of my memory. Yes, I know

50:47

exactly what you mean, and I, um,

50:51

I don't know. I mean I wonder what the processes

50:53

by which the interpreter function. Again,

50:56

just assuming this model of the interpreter and

50:58

the conscious experience is correct, mean this, you

51:00

know, this might be mistaken. But if

51:02

this is correct, what is the rubric

51:04

it uses to decide what gets integrated as

51:07

self? And what what

51:09

does it decide is alien? That's a

51:11

great question. We'll have to come back to that in the future.

51:13

Maybe there is none. Maybe it's also maybe

51:15

there's no future. Oh there's maybe there's no self. Yes,

51:18

well, you know it also brings up the question,

51:21

you know, are we limited our

51:23

Is our identity limited by

51:25

the things that we have at our disposal in our mind?

51:28

Do you count the things that we we have to depend

51:30

upon, that we have externalized,

51:33

you know, And I feel like that is part of the modern

51:35

human experience, has been part of the human

51:37

experience for a while. I mean, if an author

51:39

writes, say, thirty

51:42

books, um, and that author

51:44

cannot repeat them from memory, they are not a

51:47

part of his his or her mind. Uh,

51:49

then you know, how do you weigh that

51:51

into the equation of self? Yeah?

51:53

Exactly. And what if you didn't write them? What if

51:55

these are just books that you have incorporated

51:59

into your thinking about things?

52:01

Are those now a part of your brain? If

52:03

you know that, you could consult them

52:06

in order to figure out what you think about something,

52:08

but you can't do it without consulting them.

52:10

Yeah, what if it's a book that you've written and

52:13

you've forgotten. I believe Stephen

52:15

King has a couple of examples of that right wherever

52:17

he doesn't remember writing a particular novel.

52:19

I think one example was Coujo. He said

52:21

they didn't remember writing it because he was on drugs.

52:23

Yeah, so it's Kujo a part of Stephen King

52:26

likewise, I mean, there we all

52:28

have, prehaps the books, films, etcetera,

52:30

some sort of external influence that

52:32

has been important at one point in our life, and

52:34

then is discarded later and then

52:36

sometimes pick back up again. Oh, there's an extremely

52:39

strong social component here. Lots of

52:41

people figure out what they

52:43

think about something by checking to see what

52:45

somebody else thinks about it, whether

52:48

that's a person you know known to them, or some

52:50

public figure that they you know, derive

52:52

opinions from. Yeah, and you know what, I'm

52:54

gonna go ahead and take a stand. That's not behavior

52:57

I encourage do not do not

52:59

trust another person as much as you

53:01

trust your own, right hemisphere, don't

53:03

just directly incorporate their

53:05

their information as as self.

53:08

I can agree with that. Yes, all

53:11

right, well there you have it. We're gonna go ahead and cap

53:14

off these two episodes Part

53:16

one, Part two, Hemisphere, left

53:18

hemisphere right if you will, Uh,

53:21

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53:23

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53:25

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53:36

Invention, which comes out every Monday.

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