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Multiple "personalities" and split-brain experiments, etc

Recently I had a disturbing experience. I had been watching a bit of the UK show Naked Attraction which is a dating show that focuses on full frontal nudity. I noticed that about 80% of the men weren't circumcised. Then I was talking to my wife about that. (I think in the US and Australia a lot of men are circumcised, like myself).

About a week ago I was wondering about whether my friend from the city was circumcised. I wasn't sure if I had asked him before but I was thinking about asking him. Then recently I was talking to my wife about circumcision. I said to her that I wondered if her brother was circumcised. She said he wasn't. I asked how did she know. She said that I asked him (when she was present) a bit over a week ago! I asked if he was uncomfortable about it and she said he was fine. I didn't quite believe her but she said I could ask him. So later I asked him. He said he wasn't circumcised and he was very comfortable with the question. He didn't remember me asking him but he said he could have a bad memory.

I wasn't able to tell my family about this because they were very conservative Christians and it seemed inappropriate. It is worrying that I'm talking about things that are borderline inappropriate and not having memory of it. I think my normal personality wasn't present at the time of that circumcision discussion with my brother in law.

Recently I had a cognitive test and I went very poorly with short term memory and "retrieval fluency". Around the time of the ECTs (or a little earlier) I went pretty much perfectly on a similar test (that wasn't as long).

A couple of days ago I tried an experiment. I had the TV remote in my hand and consciously put it on a step ladder between the lounge and the kitchen. I set some bacon cooking and then looked on the ladder but it was empty. So I looked around and eventually found the remote on the furthest lounge chair with my wife. She hadn't moved.

Fairly recently I have been having problems with the stove. Sometimes I'd turn on or off the wrong ones with no memory of it.

Recently I was pushing lots of shopping trolleys and I didn't have awareness of my arms or legs. It was as if they were on autopilot. My reduced amount of awareness caused me to have some minor collisions. When I felt some pain in my foot like blisters things were fine again.
 
Sorry I'm late to the party.

This subject is one that I find incredibly fascinating. One thing that has not been mentioned yet in this thread is the Wada test, which involves injecting barbiturates into one hemisphere of the brain and performing a variety of tests to assess the functions of the hemisphere that is still "awake". This helps in identifying functional areas before hacking away at people's brains to remove tumors and the like.

Some of the stories I've found about this type of test are extremely interesting and consistent with some of the observations made of people who have undergone a corpus callosotomy or otherwise have physically split or missing hemispheres.

What I find especially interesting about the Wada test is that it has no permanent effect so, even though no doctor would ever agree to perform one on me, it is possible that the function and behavior of the left and right hemispheres of my brain could be independently observed without lasting harm. I wish I could have the test done just to know what each half of my brain is like but I probably never will. :(
 
Sorry I'm late to the party.

This subject is one that I find incredibly fascinating. One thing that has not been mentioned yet in this thread is the Wada test, which involves injecting barbiturates into one hemisphere of the brain and performing a variety of tests to assess the functions of the hemisphere that is still "awake". This helps in identifying functional areas before hacking away at people's brains to remove tumors and the like.

Some of the stories I've found about this type of test are extremely interesting and consistent with some of the observations made of people who have undergone a corpus callosotomy or otherwise have physically split or missing hemispheres.

What I find especially interesting about the Wada test is that it has no permanent effect so, even though no doctor would ever agree to perform one on me, it is possible that the function and behavior of the left and right hemispheres of my brain could be independently observed without lasting harm. I wish I could have the test done just to know what each half of my brain is like but I probably never will. :(

ME, TOO! I've been wondering about this for decades. :rofl:
 
Sorry I'm late to the party.

This subject is one that I find incredibly fascinating. One thing that has not been mentioned yet in this thread is the Wada test, which involves injecting barbiturates into one hemisphere of the brain and performing a variety of tests to assess the functions of the hemisphere that is still "awake". This helps in identifying functional areas before hacking away at people's brains to remove tumors and the like.

Some of the stories I've found about this type of test are extremely interesting and consistent with some of the observations made of people who have undergone a corpus callosotomy or otherwise have physically split or missing hemispheres.

What I find especially interesting about the Wada test is that it has no permanent effect so, even though no doctor would ever agree to perform one on me, it is possible that the function and behavior of the left and right hemispheres of my brain could be independently observed without lasting harm. I wish I could have the test done just to know what each half of my brain is like but I probably never will. :(

ME, TOO! I've been wondering about this for decades. :rofl:

I'd be afraid they find half of it up my butt or something...
 
Sorry I'm late to the party.

This subject is one that I find incredibly fascinating. One thing that has not been mentioned yet in this thread is the Wada test, which involves injecting barbiturates into one hemisphere of the brain and performing a variety of tests to assess the functions of the hemisphere that is still "awake". This helps in identifying functional areas before hacking away at people's brains to remove tumors and the like.

Some of the stories I've found about this type of test are extremely interesting and consistent with some of the observations made of people who have undergone a corpus callosotomy or otherwise have physically split or missing hemispheres.

What I find especially interesting about the Wada test is that it has no permanent effect so, even though no doctor would ever agree to perform one on me, it is possible that the function and behavior of the left and right hemispheres of my brain could be independently observed without lasting harm. I wish I could have the test done just to know what each half of my brain is like but I probably never will. :(

ME, TOO! I've been wondering about this for decades. :rofl:

I'd be afraid they find half of it up my butt or something...

Oh, we know where your other brain is, penis bearer. ;)
 
Can you provide a link to the split brain experiments you mention?

Here is a good article on the "classic" split brain patients:

https://www.nature.com/news/the-split-brain-a-tale-of-two-halves-1.10213

Basically, cutting the corpus callosum, the main neuronal connection between the two cortical hempispheres, was used as a treatment of extreme epilepsy. However, cognitive experiments revealed a lot of very interesting results on these patients that suggest that these hemispheres can act independently of each other.

For example:

View attachment 30699

Michael Gazzaniga is a neuroscientist who participated in many of the early split-brain experiments and has written several good books on the subject. I read his book, "Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain", due to my interest in the free will issue, but Gazzaniga has several other books on consciousness and the split-brain experiments. He's a good writer and very easy to read.
 
My career is contemporary with that of Gazzaniga up to and including working in BRI at Cal Tech in the late seventies. He was visiting professor in Sperry's lab from Dartmouth when I was a thirty something year old post doc in Old's lab. He had worked at Cal Tech as a graduate student with Sperry in the human spilt brain experiments in the late '60s during the time I was was sailor and technician still trying to find myself before returning to school.

Obviously he wasn't with Sperry when Sperry first found in rats, cats, and monkeys the existence of separate behaviors in the two cerebral hemispheres. So it is a bit presumptive to say he participated in Sperry's early split brain experiments in the forties, fifties, and early sixties unless you constrain them to those commissioned to Sperry in 1967. He was a graduate student under Sperry when was Sperry was commissioned in mid '60s to explore humans with such conditions. Gazzaniga rightly should be credited with contributing to the protocols used for those studies.

FY entertainment Roger Sperry's Split Brain Experiments 1959-1968: https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roger-sperrys-split-brain-experiments-1959-1968
 
My career is contemporary with that of Gazzaniga up to and including working in BRI at Cal Tech in the late seventies. He was visiting professor in Sperry's lab from Dartmouth when I was a thirty something year old post doc in Old's lab. He had worked at Cal Tech as a graduate student with Sperry in the human spilt brain experiments in the late '60s during the time I was was sailor and technician still trying to find myself before returning to school.

Obviously he wasn't with Sperry when Sperry first found in rats, cats, and monkeys the existence of separate behaviors in the two cerebral hemispheres. So it is a bit presumptive to say he participated in Sperry's early split brain experiments in the forties, fifties, and early sixties unless you constrain them to those commissioned to Sperry in 1967. He was a graduate student under Sperry when was Sperry was commissioned in mid '60s to explore humans with such conditions. Gazzaniga rightly should be credited with contributing to the protocols used for those studies.

FY entertainment Roger Sperry's Split Brain Experiments 1959-1968: https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roger-sperrys-split-brain-experiments-1959-1968

Gazzaniga speaks highly of Sperry in "Who's in Charge?". He writes about his experience in the CalTech Lab:

Gazzaniga said:
In the summer between my junior and senior year at Dartmouth College, I landed in Roger Sperry’s lab at Caltech as an undergraduate summer fellow because I was interested in the nerve regeneration studies I wrote about in the last chapter. The lab, however, was now focused on the corpus callosum, so I spent the summer trying to anesthetize the half brain of a rabbit and decided basic research was the life for me. -- Gazzaniga, Michael S.. Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain (p. 52). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Gazzaniga said:
During my senior year, I came up with the plan of retesting Akelaitis’s Rochester patients during my spring break and designed a different method of testing them.

Gazzaniga said:
Thanking all my professional colleagues would be impossible. Over the years I have been inspired by many, starting with my mentor, Roger Sperry, perhaps the greatest brain scientist who ever lived.
 
My career is contemporary with that of Gazzaniga up to and including working in BRI at Cal Tech in the late seventies. He was visiting professor in Sperry's lab from Dartmouth when I was a thirty something year old post doc in Old's lab. He had worked at Cal Tech as a graduate student with Sperry in the human spilt brain experiments in the late '60s during the time I was was sailor and technician still trying to find myself before returning to school.

Obviously he wasn't with Sperry when Sperry first found in rats, cats, and monkeys the existence of separate behaviors in the two cerebral hemispheres. So it is a bit presumptive to say he participated in Sperry's early split brain experiments in the forties, fifties, and early sixties unless you constrain them to those commissioned to Sperry in 1967. He was a graduate student under Sperry when was Sperry was commissioned in mid '60s to explore humans with such conditions. Gazzaniga rightly should be credited with contributing to the protocols used for those studies.

FY entertainment Roger Sperry's Split Brain Experiments 1959-1968: https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roger-sperrys-split-brain-experiments-1959-1968

I finally got around to reading the article. Gazzaniga only briefly mentioned the animal studies in "Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain". So it was surprising that cats seemed to have less functional difference between their two hemispheres. And I'm curious about how the control of the cat's behavior was affected by two, more or less, equal brains. How did the body continue to act as one? Which hemisphere controlled the behavior when one side wanted to move the circle block to get the food, while the other side wanted to move the block with the cross?

Gazzaniga mentioned that the right hemisphere in human studies could acquire left hemisphere functionality to some extent. It could pick up some basic language skills. There was one patient who commented that the image she was looking at was clearer on the left side (right brain speaking) and she felt more confident about what she was seeing (left brain speaking). He suggested that it was us, the listeners, that interpreted this as a single narrative from a whole brain. (But I may not be interpreting his narrative correctly).

Gazzaniga said:
"In one interview she described her experience of looking at pictures of objects that were being flashed up on a screen in her different visual fields, “On this side [pointing to a picture on the left of the screen, flashed to her right hemisphere] I see the picture, I see everything more clearly; on my right side I feel more confident, in a way, with my answer.” From previous testing, we knew that the right hemisphere was better at all kinds of perceptual judgments, so we knew that the statement about seeing more clearly was coming from her right hemisphere; and her confident speech center in her left hemisphere made the other. She put these two stories together, one from each hemisphere, but to the listener, it sounds like a completely unified statement coming from one unified system. We know intellectually, however, that it is information coming from two separate systems being woven together by our minds listening to her.

Gazzaniga, Michael S.. Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain (pp. 66-67). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
 
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I'm not sure how long I've been doing this but lately I have Netflix running in a window while browsing the Internet in other windows. Sometimes I need to pause Netflix though. And sometimes in the same show I have it running full screen....

I've been becoming more mixed up lately.... today I was pressing pause on live TV to try and mute it. And a few times for the postal tracking receipt I wrote my own name and address there instead of the person I'm sending it to... Though it made no mention of "to" or "from".

I think that is related to having multiple "personalities".... and/or limited working memory / retrieval fluency
 
Today a couple of times I had Netflix going on in the background then I realized I wasn't taking it in.... so I had to rewatch it on its own.... so my "personalities" aren't consistent.....
 
Post #16 and #17 talks about a hive mind and a quote from Scientific American - You Have a Hive Mind
Our brains seem to work not by generating only “correct” actions and executing them in serial, but rather by representing many possibilities in parallel, and suppressing all but one

A hive mind could be made up of many more elements than just two.... here's a post of mine from Reddit:

I think the default state of our brain is a hive mind. The personalties often share the same memory so our identities can mix.

But sometimes they can separate....


e.g. in split brain experiments the left and right hemispheres lose access to each other's memories.

.....

Another example involves the responsible personalities ("ego/superego") being booted off when drunk leaving them with no memory of the event. The impulsive personalities ("id") take over.

......

There could be corrupted parts of the hive mind like in Tourette syndrome when they get the urge to swear, etc. [it could involve a really frustrated personality.... a while ago I had a very strong urge to say the C word to my wife]

There was a reply from Reddit a long time ago:
This splintering of the mind comes from trauma.

Here's something that agrees with that:[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/pLvJDsojrC8?t=252[/YOUTUBE]

4:12

Mesilla, a divorced mother of two teenage children suffers from a severe form of dissociative identity disorder. It used to be known as multiple personality disorder where a person as a result of severe stress or abuse creates other personalities to carry the burden of that trauma

5:52

She developed her illness in 2013 and initially blamed a car accident but a traumatic sexual assault she suffered years ago is the more likely cause of her brain's fragmentation. The only reason we dissociate is because we're in overwhelming emotional or physical pain - that we can't bear - the experience is unbearable - literally unbearable and so the brain fragments and falls apart and sequester's feelings in different parts
 
We are whatever a brain happens to be doing. The rest is window dressing, decoration, explanation and attempts at supporting favourite theories.....

Yeah, no kidding. Most sane people know that. At least MOST of the people who post here (I hope!)

BUT! - there's always a (_!_) <<< a human buttocks, rendered with keystrokes (and including an anus) !

***

BUT - we are much more than a brain, and whatever a brain happens to be doing. We are also a physical body, which has a central nervous system and ultra-sensitive, often over-reacting and silly, nerves at all points of our body, at least on the outside, and mostly on the inside too. YES - this stuff is regulated by the brain (at least the silly unconscious half with the reptilian kernel that handles most of the body's functions and even behaviors and actions underneath the radar of the "I", who operates the other side of the brain (if the individual is lucky, that is, and not a knuckle-dragging, opinionated, chest-pounding, mouth-breathing neanderthal [read: average alpha-male, especially the hairless apes {and I don't mean Robin Williams, may he rest in peace - funny guy, and too bad for his daughter, now entangled in legal crap that is not her fault}]) ---

YES, this stuff is regulated by the brain. Most sane human individuals know this - and probably some other animals (Pauly Shore not included - I doubt he knows much of anything!).

What excreationist is trying to do - or at least what I *think* they are trying to do, based on a variety of posts and threads they have started - is explore certain fringe theories expounded by some theoretical physicists, philosophers, scientists, physicians, and neuroscientists, as well as non-professionals in every area of endeavor, from dishwashers to poets (who are sometimes the same person!).

There are multiple interesting theories, posited and explained upon with a great deal of ink and zeroes & ones from time l o n g past, by philosophers, scientists, time-traveling rock stars and/or geniuses in other fields, novelists, cosmologists, theologians, mathematicians, theoretical physicists, etc...

etc&...
 
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Yikes!!!

We are whatever a brain happens to be doing. The rest is window dressing, decoration, explanation and attempts at supporting favourite theories.....

Yeah, no kidding. Most sane people know that. At least MOST of the people who post here (I hope!)

BUT! - there's always a (_!_) <<< a human buttocks, rendered with keystrokes (and including an anus) !

***

BUT - we are much more than a brain, and whatever a brain happens to be doing. We are also a physical body, which has a central nervous system and ultra-sensitive, often over-reacting and silly, nerves at all points of our body, at least on the outside, and mostly on the inside too. YES - this stuff is regulated by the brain (at least the silly unconscious half with the reptilian kernel that handles most of the body's functions and even behaviors and actions underneath the radar of the "I", who operates the other side of the brain (if the individual is lucky, that is, and not a knuckle-dragging, opinionated, chest-pounding, mouth-breathing neanderthal [read: average alpha-male, especially the hairless apes {and I don't mean Robin Williams, may he rest in peace - funny guy, and too bad for his daughter, now entangled in legal crap that is not her fault}]) ---

YES, this stuff is regulated by the brain. Most sane human individuals know this - and probably some other animals (Pauly Shore not included - I doubt he knows much of anything!).

What excreationist is trying to do - or at least what I *think* they are trying to do, based on a variety of posts and threads they have started - is explore certain fringe theories expounded by some theoretical physicists, philosophers, scientists, physicians, and neuroscientists, as well as non-professionals in every area of endeavor, from dishwashers to poets (who are sometimes the same person!).

There are multiple interesting theories, posited and explained upon with a great deal of ink and zeroes & ones from time l o n g past, by philosophers, scientists, time-traveling rock stars and/or geniuses in other fields, novelists, cosmologists, theologians, mathematicians, theoretical physicists, etc...

etc&...

Evolution is not like loading chambers of a gun or filling a clip or doing anything else that produces single shot results. In fact evolution defies most any synthesis humans can envision.

There are rules. As we better understand physics, chemistry, biology we better understand what is meant by  Natural Selection as we better understand outcome possibilities at any configuration of material inputs acting in that process.

A cautionary note:

The principles of natural selection have inspired a variety of computational techniques, such as "soft" artificial life, that simulate selective processes and can be highly efficient in 'adapting' entities to an environment defined by a specified fitness function.[133] For example, a class of heuristicoptimisationalgorithms known as genetic algorithms, pioneered by John Henry Holland in the 1970s and expanded upon by David E. Goldberg,[134] identify optimal solutions by simulated reproduction and mutation of a population of solutions defined by an initial probability distribution.[135] Such algorithms are particularly useful when applied to problems whose energy landscape is very rough or has many local minima.[136]

It's been less than seventy years since we understood the physical basis and structure of even the first templates upon which physical processes can act to generate selection. Look what are trying to do.

We still don't nor shall we probably never understand such beyond models.

So bring on the theories. Be patient. Rules will develop and hopefully we'll come to learn we can't meddle in what is going on to any significant benefit to mankind any more than we'll ever be able put the atomic genie back in the bottle preventing end of times.

Life is way to impatient for such.

Another cautionary note: We are privy to less than a small fraction of one percent of what exists in the universe, yet we have advanced theories grandly called TOE.


So says the fearful one.
 
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