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Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness

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Re: Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness

#51

Post by c3534l »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #38
insickness wrote: post #33

A few years before he died, I heard Kim Peek speak at an event. He was a savant who retained 98% of everything he read. He would memorize phone books simply by reading them once. When he read, his left eye would read the left page while his right eye would read the right page at the same time. He could tell anyone the sports scores listed in the newspaper on the day they were born. He was also severely socially impai…

My problem with that sort of demonstration of amazing memory powers is that I have no way to check the sports scores on the day I was born as quickly as the person who says they're retrieving them from memory does so. Even if I could just google them (there might be some online sports results archive or something- it would still not mean much unless I could find an identical copy of the exact listing the mnemonist me…

Kim Peek was an extremely well documented individual. That he retained seemingly inhuman amounts of information is not under dispute, even though such charlatans do exist.

Re: Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness

#52

Post by c3534l »

throwaway26960 wrote: post #39

Does every animal/insect have two brain hemispheres? For example, what about a spider, or an octopus?

Spiders have donut shaped brains. Source: owned a tarantula. Some animals jon't have bilaterally symmetric brains on account of having brains, like jelly fish.

Re: Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness

#53

Post by c3534l »

incompatible wrote: post #19

I'm not sure that this proves that there's a single consciousness. There may be a second consciousness that is receiving some information about observations from the other hemisphere.

That was already known, too. It does show that it doesn't create two completely equal, completely functional consciousnesses. But the problem with brain damage is people tend to also lose the ability to recognize that an ability is missing, so we can't just ask peóle "are you a little less conscious than you were before we took out that part of your brain?"

Re: Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness

#54

Post by thereisnospork »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #47
Omnius wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outcomes of historical, national, sporting events are not subjective. It would be easy to check and verify even if you couldn't do it that second you could still after the fact check and call out anyone pretending. With or without the exact identical text the "memorizer" used.

OK, so how can you ever verify with any degree of certainty where and when someone acquired a memory? If I can just look up those details somewhere else, at my convenience, then how can you ever be sure I didn't?

By asking for details from a set of arbitrary, random dates, such as people's birthdays. A set of dates the questionee could have no way of knowing. In order for him to know the answer to trivia on multiple arbitrary dates off the cuff would require him to, you know, have memorized the trivia for all the dates -- which kind of proves the point.

Re: Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness

#55

Post by jwdunne »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #47
Omnius wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outcomes of historical, national, sporting events are not subjective. It would be easy to check and verify even if you couldn't do it that second you could still after the fact check and call out anyone pretending. With or without the exact identical text the "memorizer" used.

OK, so how can you ever verify with any degree of certainty where and when someone acquired a memory? If I can just look up those details somewhere else, at my convenience, then how can you ever be sure I didn't?

It wasn't a parlour trick. He was a savant. If you have read anything on Kim Peek, this would be clear. We wouldn't want that nor could do we do that - he suffered more than hev benefitted.

Re: Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness

#56

Post by summarite »

joeyo wrote: post #17
advisedwang wrote: post #2

Interestingly this work contradicts not just previous theory, but also previous experimental result. I would be interested to see if they have a critique for why the previous runs of the experiment provided a different experimental result.

They discuss a few possibilities. The first is cross-cueing, which they describe as " ... behavioural tricks, such as touching the left hand with the right hand" [1]. However, they also discuss a number of reasons why they think cross-cueing did not play a role. The second (and imho quite interesting) explanation is that the split-brain phenomenon could be transient: their subjects have had between 10 and 20 years to…

Very interesting. I'm also wondering whether we might just be approaching this with too much b/w thinking - it might simply differ widely between individual patients. The operation was done by only a small number of doctors, so it might well be that each set of patients (regionally somewhat separate) has slightly different results. Or even that each individual differs - they weren't operated with modern precision and even with modern techniques you likely still would get slightly different operation results on each attempt.

For the second suggestion to be tested they would have to identify someone who was tested 10/20/30/40 years ago and try to repeat the experiment.

One last thought: that information flows between brain halves doesn't exclude the possibility of there still being some disconnect and/or even two 'personas'.

Re: Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness

#57

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

thereisnospork wrote: post #54
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so how can you ever verify with any degree of certainty where and when someone acquired a memory? If I can just look up those details somewhere else, at my convenience, then how can you ever be sure I didn't?

By asking for details from a set of arbitrary, random dates, such as people's birthdays. A set of dates the questionee could have no way of knowing. In order for him to know the answer to trivia on multiple arbitrary dates off the cuff would require him to, you know, have memorized the trivia for all the dates -- which kind of proves the point.

Unfortunately, just having someone tell you something doesn't prove anything, unless you have a way to check that the fact is true- and for most of Kim Peek's life this was not the case.

For instance- his article on wikipedia mentions that he "enjoyed approaching strangers and showing them his talent for calendar calculations by telling them on which day of the week they were born and what news items were on the front page of major newspapers".

I assume he did that throughout his adult life, so when he was in his 30s an 40's, in the 1980's and 1990's, how would the person he approached this way check the news that Peek told them were on the front page of X newspaper? They couldn't very well google it on their iPhone back then.

Besides, this is not very clear in his wikipedia entry, but it seems to me like he made a living out of his skills, so you know, it was at least partly entertainment (without trivialising, or in any way shape or form ignoring, the fact that the guy had obvious disabilities).

So I'm saying, when a guy tells you he can recall for you a bunch of facts you dont' really remember yourself and you can't very easily verify, and by the way you're welcome to a donation, you can take what he says with a big pinch of salt.

Re: Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness

#58

Post by tempestn »

Is it possible there's some wireless communication going on via electric fields that we're not yet aware of?

Quick google search suggests this is a thing: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110202132617.h...

Could it be happening on a large enough scale to allow communication between hemispheres though? I'm not suggesting this would take over for the corpus callosum, but rather that it may be happening for everyone, so the true amount of transfer even after the corpus callosotomy is higher than expected?

Re: Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness

#59

Post by tempestn »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #46
erroneousfunk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sports scores aren't different between papers, and the order, or the specific way it was printed in the paper, doesn't matter. There are many archives where you can easily look this information up. I was born August 9th, 1988. That's baseball season. On that day, it's a non-controversial fact that there was a double header between the Red Sox and the Brewers. The Sox lost the first game 2-3 and won the second, 5-1. L…

The point is that not all newspapers are going to be publishing the exact same amount of information on any event, including sports scores. So, for example, if a person is saying they remember that the Red Sox lost 2-3 to the Brewers, and that they read that in The New York Times, you can check the NYT to see if they published that result on that day. I mean, if they say they remember reading that in the NYT, but it…

What difference does it make? If a person can recall from memory the scores for any major sporting event on any arbitrary day, who cares which source they originally memorized them from? Regardless it is easily verifiable, even pre-internet, and regardless it qualifies as super memory.

Re: Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness

#60

Post by matt-snider »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #57
thereisnospork wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By asking for details from a set of arbitrary, random dates, such as people's birthdays. A set of dates the questionee could have no way of knowing. In order for him to know the answer to trivia on multiple arbitrary dates off the cuff would require him to, you know, have memorized the trivia for all the dates -- which kind of proves the point.

Unfortunately, just having someone tell you something doesn't prove anything, unless you have a way to check that the fact is true- and for most of Kim Peek's life this was not the case. For instance- his article on wikipedia mentions that he " enjoyed approaching strangers and showing them his talent for calendar calculations by telling them on which day of the week they were born and what news items were on the fro…

You don't seem to get it. These sorts of things are all examples of verifiable facts. Calendar calculations are trivial to verify with a computer, and news archives existed long before iPhones and ubiquitous internet access.

You don't think given his fame, that his talents were rigorously tested and verified?

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