Hemispheres Of The Brain :: essays research papers

Hemispheres of the Brain   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  As I was reading the text I came upon a section that I thought to be quite fascinating. It talked about people who have a brain that functions like two different people inside of the brain. This is of course the Split-Brain Personality. As I studied this topic in more detail I found it to be quite broad and yet very detailed. I found that I needed a dictionary to be able to read all of the medical journals and books that are out there, to be able to understand what it was exactly, that I was reading. But with a little study and research I found that this is a precise science that is still largely full of mysteries. The study of hemispheric asymmetry with in the cerebral cortex had long been a fascination with the human race. The ancient Aztec cultures used to perform a type of brain surgery on humans. This is evident from the human remains that we find with incisions and piece's missing of the skull. Whether or not these primitive surgeries were successful is unknown. The earliest way for man to observe the brain was by noticing brain damage to a particular area of the brain that was damaged. Such observations were first recorded some 5,000 years ago (Myers,1995). The most popular case is that of Phineas Gage a railroad worker that had severe frontal lobe damage. This happened when a rail road spike was shot through his head by a piece of dynamite. Miraculously he lived through the experience, but with a severe change in his personality. From this physiologists learned that personality was largely controlled from this point namely by removing a persons inhibitions. For the most part the brain has been a mystery that is waiting to be opened. The last two decades have witnessed a period of research on the human cerebral functions comparable to the great era of discovery initiated by Broca in 1861(Young, G,. Segalowitz, S,. Corter, C,. Trehub, S,.1983). We have leaned more in the past 20 years about the brain and it's hemispheric asymmetry than we had learned in combined previous history.(Kosslyn, 1993). Most of this new work has been devoted to the study of cerebral functions in adults, but recently there has been a growing interest in infants and young children most especially among the study of hand preference. About 10 percent of the human population in left-handed(Myers,1995). By looking at ancient writings this right-hand preference has seemed to develop right from the start of the human race. It also is apparent that from ultrasound devises that about 9 in 10 fetuses suck