Use of Two Cerebral Hemispheres to increase Brain Capacity

Abstract

STUDIES of split-brain cats and monkeys demonstrate that each cerebral hemisphere possesses its own perceiving, learning and remembering system, and that each functions independently of the other. Section of the mid-brain commissures also creates two independently functioning systems in the human brain¹. The split-brain monkey can process and respond to more information involving bimanual motor sequencing than can control animals with their commissures intact², and commissurotomy patients perform double voluntary reaction time tasks as fast as they carry out a single reaction³. In man, two verbal messages projected to separate hemispheres are dealt with more efficiently than two messages directed simultaneously to the same hemisphere⁴, and reaction times are shorter when the information is projected separately to each cerebral hemisphere⁵.